ANTHEM

7-ELEVEN AND CHEMIST WAREHOUSE, A LOVE STORY

I might go completely crazy. Pick up a gun. Bang bang bang bang bang. bang. bang. bang.

Eryn Jean Norvill as Lisa holds up the board of a small swimwear and lycra company. Photo - Pia Johnson

Cover photo: Ruci Kaisila in Anthem. Photo - Pia Johnson

“This is tough, funny theatre with an urgency to its purpose and no comfortable answers. It can’t say everything about modern Australia, but what it does say rings true." Gay Alcorn, The Guardian.

““These are urgent times,” speaks one character in the opening scene. Four words that foreshadow the next two hours, and that have stuck with me since. Anthem presents a snapshot of contemporary Australia, inspired by a piece from 21 years ago called ‘Who’s Afraid Of The Working Class?’ by these same five highly influential writers, and at that time presented a snapshot of Australia in 1998. Anthem is possibly the most important piece of theatre presented in Melbourne this year, and we are so very lucky to have a collaboration of this scale to represent our turbulent country.” Owen James. Theatre Press.

“Anthem is powerful and important theatre that should inspire reflection on how Australia became so polarised – so exhausted and resentful, self-serving and paranoid” Cameron Woodhead.

The script of Anthem is published by Currency Press.

ANTHEM is the third in the trilogy of plays written by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsolkias, and composed by Irine Vela. It is made up of four interlocking narratives and a musical composition. UNCENSORED, by Andrew Bovell, TERROR, by Patricia Cornelius, BROTHERS AND SISTERS by Christos Tsolkias, and 7-ELEVEN AND CHEMIST WAREHOUSE, A LOVE STORY, by Melissa Reeves. It was commissioned twenty years after Who’s afraid of the working Class? and grapples with what the country has become in the intervening years. We called our play ANTHEM because there didn’t seem to be any song we could sing together. Just as in WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS, we were addressing an absence.

“Anthem is a finely tuned and beautifully calibrated theatre work that captures the anxieties that plague Australian society.” Patricia Di Risio, Stage whispers

PRODUCTIONS:

Produced by Arts Centre Melbourne for the Melbourne Festival, Sydney Festival, Perth Festival 2019.

Directed by Susie Dee.