Tom Davis says his play The Chain Bridge is about history and how what happens to people reverberates through time and generations.
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The play, directed by The Street Theatre's artistic director, Caroline Stacey, will begin its premiere season at The Street on November 21.
"The tagline of the play is 'Does history ever release us?' To what degree can anyone make their own way separate from their history of their family?" Davis says.
In it, Imre, played by Peter Cook, is a Melbourne academic, described by Davis as "an almost failed historian who is trying to write the history of his family in a nice, publicly accessible book that will sell thousands and thousands of copies".
One of his major sources of information is his Hungarian Jewish mother Ava (Geraldine Turner), who emigrated to Australia after World War II. Her mother, Deborah, died during the conflict and Ava has some amazing stories to recount. But having done other research, Imre finds himself torn.
"He wants to tell the great stories she tells," Davis says.
"But what she tells him doesn't always seem to match up with the facts."
From the war and afterwards during the 1951 Hungarian uprising, there seem to be a lot of questions still unanswered or that need re-investigating. Imre's wife Sarah (Kate Hosking), also an academic historian (and a more successful one) is a stickler for the truth being presented but while Imre wants answers he also wants a widely appealing book that will sell well – and he does not want to hurt his mother.
Matters come to a head at a family dinner also attended by Joszef (P.J. Williams), an old friend of Ava's who came out from Hungary before her, and his wife Katalin (Zsuzsi Soboslay).
"They know some of the truth," Davis says.
He says the older generation of characters "all had to adapt in their own ways to living with horror and living as immigrants in a new country and figuring out how to survive".
And during this dinner, some long-buried secrets are uncovered as the play moves around in time from present-day Richmond to the streets of 1956 Budapest, Nazi-occupied Hungary, and 1960s Melbourne dance halls and the actors play different characters at different times – 21 in all – bringing events from the past as well as the present to life.
Stacey says, "One of the questions I had as a director was, how do I deal with a work that spans eight decades, that jumps around between times, places and people?" She decided to keep the pace fast and filmic, relying on the skills of the actors and the intelligence of the audience as much as such elements as props, costuming and settings to keep the story and characters clear.
Davis says The Chain Bridge has been through "a fairly extensive series of rewrites".
"I've come through the First Seen play-creating program. The play has been in development since 2012."
Peter Matheson, from the Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company, was dramaturge in the development process at the Street Theatre.
"There was a reading of an early version in 2013 and they agreed to pick it up in 2014 ... it's my first time at the Street," former Melburnian Davis says. As well as having written earlier plays he's also an academic but stresses the unsuccessful Imre is not an autobiographical character in that respect.
But he was inspired to write this play from his own mixed ethnic origins – "Anglo, some German, Jewish, French, Slavic" – and social connections with friends whose families were survivors of the Holocaust or the Vietnam War or other deeply traumatic events.
"This was the Australia I lived in – while I hadn't lived through any of these stories, dealing with these stories is part of being Australian."
He says the younger couple in the play have to try to put themselves in the place of the older immigrant characters and understand their history.
"They have to commit an act of empathy – to get a sense of how the acts have marked them."
Stacey says, "Tom's challenge has been to bring these qualities into sharp focus and to ask how we position ourselves into our own personal history and also Australian history. There are many silences in Australia [for example] – the silence around the institutional abuse of children and of perpetrators of war crimes that have been given a place to live in Australia."
She says she also has many colleagues and friends who have come to Australia under different circumstances and with varying stories and experiences and has taken note of how people create histories and communities and stories and what they do to survive.
Davis says that while The Chain Bridge "sounds very heavy" with all its considerations of history and truth and family, "There's also a lot of funny stuff and it's very vibrant."
The Chain Bridge is on at the Street Theatre on November 21, 22 and 25 to 29. Tickets $25-$39. More information and bookings: thestreet.org.au.