Apocalypse Theatre Company’s ASYLUM

Rapid-response theatre flies in the face of theatrical tradition, but it shouldn’t always be like that. The average play takes approximately two years to reach the stage, by which time any topicality it may have had initially has long-since passed. Enter rapid-response theatre, where plays appear on stage mere weeks after being pitched or commissioned. You might remember Hollywood Ending at Griffin in November 2012; where that project took nine weeks to journey from concept to the stage, Asylum – a twenty-four-play cyclical response to the federal government’s Operation Sovereign Borders – appears approximately four weeks after pitching. The plays here are raw, unsentimental, unflinching; visceral. Under the artistic direction of Dino Dimitriadis, Apocalypse Theatre Company hosts 97 artists in a fearless and challenging exploration of what it means to seek asylum, what it means to come to Australia by boat, how it affects us – personally, as a community.