Staging Asylum

This enhanced ebook brings together six contemporary Australian plays that offer a range of narratives and perspectives on asylum seekers. It also includes extensive teachers’ notes, plus a substantial amount of analysis and multimedia. The result is a curated experience of the plays as a whole: on stage and within the discourse on unauthorised asylum seekers, immigration detention, border control and the right to belong.

Staging Asylum: the plays

This eclectic collection includes: 'CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident)' by version 1.0, a smart, ironic verbatim work that deals with the Children Overboard Affair and the SIEV X disaster; 'The Rainbow Dark' by Victoria Carless, a surreal domestic satire about immigration detention; 'The Pacific Solution' by Ben Eltham, which takes armchair cricket commentary as a point of departure for a farce about the Howard government’s excision of migration territory; 'Halal-el-Mashakel' by Linda Jaivin, which looks at the friendship between two detained asylum seekers; 'Journey of Asylum – Waiting' devised by Catherine Simmonds, a series of vignettes based upon the personal experiences of asylum seekers and refugees living in Melbourne; and 'Nothing But Nothing' by Towfiq Al-Qady, an autobiographical play about childhood and war.

The extra content:

- 4 academic articles looking at issues affecting asylum seekers and refugees. Contributors: Julian Burnside AO QC, Judi Moylan, Dr. Joseph Pugliese, Dr. Caroline Wake
- An interview (audio) with Judi Moylan on governmental migration policies from Federation to present day
- An interview (audio) with Morteza Poorvadi on his experiences as an asylum seeker and refugee
- Teachers’ notes