Every night, after the Sydney Festival performance of the play Prize Fighter, a great arc of sweat must be wiped off the stage.
Written by Congolese-Australian playwright Future D. Fidel, the work is set in a boxing ring, its actors locked in a literal and metaphorical fight to escape a dark past.
![The action in <i>Prize Fighter</i> is carefully choreographed but punches do sometimes land accidentally.](/web/20170106233205im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/z/9/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtl6dk.png/1483602549752.jpg)
"There are times when the whole space is covered in sweat and it's flying through the air," Fidel says. "The actors are dripping in sweat throughout."
Prize Fighter, which is Fidel's first full-length play and opens on Saturday at Belvoir Theatre, was inspired by elements of the playwright's past and people he has met.
It follows Isa, a talented young Congolese boxer preparing for a national Australian championship. While sparring in the ring he is vividly transported back to moments in his traumatic childhood including seeing his family being killed by rebels and being forced to become a soldier by the same militia.
"Being in the ring is like being in the warzone for Isa," Fidel says. "There he fights his people, his enemies and his struggles. And these memories become an obstacle for him becoming the best boxer he can be."
A refugee from East Congo, Fidel fled the civil war in 1996 and spent eight years in Nyarugusu, a Tanzanian refugee camp. He discovered his mother had been killed in Congo in 2001. In 2005, a year after being reunited with his missing sister, he was granted refugee status in Australia as an 18-year-old.
"Isa is fighting demons that are way different to mine," he says. "I wasn't a child fighter.
"Prize Fighter is about Isa punching away from the past, punching away the demons in his mind. Whether or not he succeeds, at least he has taken the first step, at least he is stronger and has started making peace with himself. "
"Mainly, I wanted to let people know what really happens in Congo. Things that we don't really see, things that the media don't show.
"Also it is good to show how other people might overcome their obstacles regardless of how dark their past is. The essence of [the play] is hope and true life."
Prize Fighter, which is directed by Todd MacDonald, has a cast of six including Pacharo "Pach" Mzembe as Isa, and his brother Gideon Mzembe as Isa's boxing opponent and, in flashbacks, Matete, the rebel leader.
The Mzembe brothers were also refugees to Australia having fled their Malawi village aged five and six.
Both actors are experienced sportsmen and their stage bouts, created with fight director Nigel Poulton, are choreographed. But this is no fabricated fight and, occasionally, a punch lands where it shouldn't.
"But they just have to carry on," Fidel says. "It's pretty intense."
The play debuted to critical acclaim at the Brisbane Festival in 2015 and Fidel, who is artist-in-residence at La Boite Theatre Company in Brisbane, has since fine-tuned it for the Sydney Festival and begun work on a new play.
Australia has given him a place to feel secure but like anywhere in the world, he says, it harbours racism and humanitarianism.
"When I came to Australia, one of our neighbours, her and her husband they were pretty old, but they would bring us clothing, buy us food and invite us to dinner," he says. "They hardly knew us. It was like, 'Wow, this is very welcoming'.
"Racism exists everywhere even in your own kind. You might be in Africa and you're witnessing that. You cannot say there is a place without racism, that's impossible."
Prize Fighter is at Belvoir Theatre until January 22, sydneyfestival.org.au