WHAT’S ON (Sydney): Ladies Day

WHAT’S ON (Sydney): Ladies Day

“When I was in Sydney I used to go to the opening of new nightclubs and fashion stores. When I came to Broome I’ve found myself going to the opening of Chicken Treat and Red Rooster. So I came here to get away from a busy social life but unfortunately it follows you if you’ve got that kind of nature.” – Rodney in Ladies Day, by Alana Valentine

Playwright Alana Valentine describes her new play Ladies Day as having “benefitted from the generous self-disclosure of men who identify as homosexual living in Broome, elsewhere in the Kimberley and also in the Northern Territory.”

[showads ad=MREC] But she adds that given her own sustained relationship with the LGBTI communities of Sydney (and elsewhere) it would be fair to say that much of her life has contributed to the portraits of the characters in this drama.

Celebrated for her real-life, verbatim inspired works Run Rabbit Run and Parramatta Girls, Valentine says that despite her consultations with gay men in these regions, Ladies Day slides further along the scale toward fiction than documentary.

“The line between truth and fiction is one which audiences themselves must draw,” she says.

“My sincere contract with the audience for Ladies Day is that I hope this work is no less true for being an artifice of conflations, amalgamations and combinations of stories drawn from real life.”

She continues: “In truth, there are some darker aspects of the gay community that I found myself wanting to explore in this work and so it was an act of protection and integrity to conflate and construct fictional characters to present that.

“There is also a female character through whose eyes we experience many of the events as they take place.

“I can’t say much more than that without spoiling the surprises and reveals of the drama.”

However, Valentine is passionate about the value of translating homosexual experience to the Sydney stage.

“The experience of being misunderstood and underestimated as women, and patronised and bullied as lesbians, and discriminated against as homosexual people of difference can be turned into an asset in finding connection and sympathy, in building hope and resilience in our lives,” she says.

“Yes, it makes us uniquely vulnerable but it inversely makes us magnificently open and emotional and hungry for connection to others. The GLBTI communities throughout the world gift to their cultures the beauty of their passion and courage and they must be valued for that.

Ladies Day wrestles with some dark aspects of our psyche – the ways we deal with hard truths and confronting experiences – but I hope it will leave audiences, ultimately, with the joy of being true to yourself.”

Ladies Day is on at Griffin Theatre from Febaury 5 to March 26. For details and tickets, click here

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