LYREBIRD
The fires that burned through Kinglake three years ago, on Black Saturday, were some of the worst in the state – 38 people died in that small town alone. It’s hard to come back from that. Playwright Amelia Evans should know: Kinglake is her hometown.
“We moved away when I was 10 or 11,” she says.
“It’s quite an oppressive place, it takes an hour to get anywhere. You’re at the beck and call of the wilderness.”
In the aftermath of the fires, families in Kinglake and across the Victorian countryside were having the same conversation around the breakfast table: can we bear to leave what’s left of our home, our community, the life we’ve known – and can we afford not to?
Plenty did leave.
Evans became fascinated with charting the progress of the survivors who stayed.
“Part of my belief is that running away is not always a bad thing,” she says.
“After the fires, the people who stayed behind were saying ‘We grieved for two days, and now we’ve got to start cleaning up’,” she says.
Her production Lyrebird takes us to a burnt-out shell of a house, where Cate, Henry and their daughter Jess are all getting on with it. One parent wants to stay. The other wants to go.
Three months on from Black Saturday, they’ve invited friends June and Tim over for a ‘normal’ dinner, but there’s not much normal left amongst the charcoal.
“I didn’t want it to be one person’s story. I also wanted it to be as if we had stayed there, and as if it were my family,” Evans says.
“A lot of my mum’s friends are women so I have a very strong sense of the female experience. With the men, it’s harder. Because they’re very Australian, they don’t talk about feelings, they just get to work.”
And, because it is very Australian, Lyrebird promises to go beyond the grief.
“It’s not bogged down with sadness – there’s a lot of love, a lot of humour and laughter,” Evans says.
“It is about people who are just trying to move on.”
Mar 28-Apr 21, The Old Fitzroy Theatre, cnr Cathedral & Dowling Sts, Woolloomooloo, $21-33, or $34-41 with dinner, 1300 241 167, rocksurfers.org
