In a remote Australian country town, two sisters are held captive. They live in terror; it's all they have ever known. The person who should be their protector is instead a dangerous, unpredictable monster. There is no escaping him.
It's a bleak picture but it reflects what life is like for thousands of women. In Australia, one in three women has experienced violence or abuse by an intimate partner. Director Susie Dee is jack of it – enough is enough, she says. Her latest play, Animal, explores what happens when women fight back.
![Nicci Wilks and Kate Sherman in <i>Animal</i>, which aims to be shocking and violent.](/web/20170104044450im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/g/8/e/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsjlvc.png/1478830208587.jpg)
The work tells the sisters' story and fleshes out how women born into violence might justifiably respond. "What's revealed through the piece, through physical and visceral work, is the abusive environment they're born into and how it manifests. They go through different stages of blame and punishment and isolation," says Dee. "It escalates, they turn on each other. It's an unflinching examination of violence. They get to a point where they can't take it any more and they rebel and slowly morph ... the only way to combat this violent cycle is to act quick and act hard."
Developed with actors Nicci Wilks and Kate Sherman, Animal has no spoken text and therefore takes a completely different form to much of Dee's work. Dee often directs plays that are very text-based, with carefully crafted words forming the basis for each performance. This particular piece required something different. "As a director I have a passion to work with bodies and to see what the body can do physically and how much you can extract from the body. I also felt that these girls had been muted, they had no voice. There's the overpowering spectre of the kidnapper, that's the father figure, and the girls don't speak and have to communicate with gesture and their bodies. You see them not being able to speak but you see their inner voices projected in text behind them. "
In developing the play, Dee, Wilks and Sherman researched domestic violence extensively. The epidemic of violence women experience in this country is shocking and though it's an issue given more media coverage in recent years, there's a long way to go. Dee acknowledges the tremendous work done by Rosie Batty recently, as well as by various organisations trying to raise awareness of domestic violence. Education has a critical role to play, especially of young boys and young men.
"But I suppose we wanted to take it that extra step and say, what do we do now? It's mainly men who are violent against women. I suppose we wanted to jump to the extreme and say women have got to act," she says. "We wanted to take it to a bit of a futuristic extreme and say we can be as violent as you. Let's take up arms and go out there and fight the big fight."
Originally called Scarred, at a certain point the team decided Animal was a more appropriate title. The play explores the instinctive reaction to getting hurt. "What happens when an animal gets hurt; do they just lay down and die?" asks Dee. "No – they fight. We wanted to look at that terrain as well.
"While men physically are strong, when you look at the cycle of violence, it's not just the physical. It's about power and control."
![<i>Animal</i> is about two sisters who are kept in captivity and what they decide to do about their captor.](/web/20170104044450im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/g/8/e/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsjlvc.png/1478830208587.jpg)
She recalls being on the jury in a case in which a young woman stabbed her partner with a carving knife. He wasn't physically violent but it came out that mental violence was ongoing. "She was this meek, mild woman, who had been emotionally and psychologically battered. One day, he wouldn't eat the meal she'd made and she picked up the knife ... What is that moment when you snap? We're looking at those moments."
Basic self-defence classes will run alongside the show and a Q&A; session about the issues raised will be held half way through the show's season.
![<i>Animal</i> challenges notions about women and how they respond to violence.](/web/20170104044450im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/g/8/e/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsjlvc.png/1478830208587.jpg)
As a society, we have a long way to go to address the complexities involved with domestic violence. Too often, women are judged for not leaving violent partners. A raft of issues contribute to staying in violent relationships – financial pressures, fear, nowhere to go, wanting children to grow up with two parents. There are no simple, one-size-fits-all answers. "Women get stuck," says Dee. "They're caught in this thing. Battering is never just once. They're in this cycle – this action happens, then forgiveness happens, empathy happens, love happens, then violence again ..."
Another driving factor for the play was that women are rarely portrayed being violent or brutal. Dee says the team wanted to explore different ways of being, including the tough and harsh and ugly. "[We wanted to show] strong women on stage and why can't they be – why can't we see them retaliate. The majority of women on stage, they're pretty ... run of the mill, you don't see many colours in female characters."
Responding to violence with violence is not a solution but this work challenges preconceived notions about how women are in the world. "Personally I know that's not the answer, you don't fight war with war. But I suppose we wanted to make a statement: enough is enough is enough is enough. With art you always want to make a difference, you want to ask the big questions, to ask about the current political climate. It's a fine line between being too declamatory or didactic. I want to make theatre that is relevant, that is shocking, that makes us think."
Dee recently directed Patricia Cornelius's Shit, which features three strong female characters, who are hardcore mean and nasty. "Those women you want to run away from; they were gutsy and in your face. It was a really vital piece of theatre and vital characters that you don't often see on the stage."
Cornelius has written several pieces with similar themes, including Slut, Love, and Savages, the latter a fictionalised version of Diane Brimble's death on board a cruise ship. Shit will feature in next year's Sydney Festival. According to Dee, people were shocked by the show but also found it really refreshing. It sold out two seasons straight away and has won four green room awards: "Obviously people are hungry for that sort of work."
Animal has been in gestation for six years and was inspired by a workshop the team did with a Spanish theatre company called La Fura Dels Baus, who are based outside Barcelona. A predominantly male group, their shows are often shocking and deliberately provocative. They sometimes work with chainsaws, and Dee remembers seeing one piece, set in an old railway shed as part of the Sydney Festival, at which an audience member was hit by a chainsaw, which broke their collarbone. "It's quite dangerous and violent work," she says.
Originally that was the style of work envisaged for this show but it's been pared back into something more simple. "Hopefully it will be shocking and violent. A lot of our theatre is very palatable. I've been creating theatre for quite a long time and I'm over that really. When you've got a limited time to do your art, you want to tackle things with all you've got [and] not be afraid to look at humanity in all its complexities and ugliness."
Animal is at Theatreworks, St Kilda, November 17-27. theatreworks.org.au