Canberra actor Sara Zwangobani on the post Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power production at Belconnen Arts Centre

A few months ago, the Canberra actress was in the middle of an international press tour for Amazon Prime's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Next month she's in Brazil for Comic-Con. This week, however, she's back in her home town for the world premiere of That Was Friday at Belconnen Arts Centre.

The brainchild of Charley and Eliza Sanders from House of Sand, That Was Friday is a contemporary performance work, that combines theatre, documentary and dance to explore the bonds that we form throughout our lives, whether that be blood family, chosen family or communities in which we find ourselves in. And it centres on this is an Australian family who have become geographically dispersed, only to have created their own communities.

In the case of Zwangobani's character, who is the mother in this family, it all comes at a time when she is starting to realise that a lot of the things that she wanted from life, didn't happen.

"That's something that hopefully a lot of people do start to come to realise as they progress through life," she says.

"Some of the things we want when we are young, it's not that those things are the right things to want or need or have, but even if they occur, there may not be what we think they are in order to be a whole person.

"I remember on the tour I was doing recently for [The Rings of Power], and ... I was sitting down with one of the other actors Morfydd [Clark], and she was talking about, how we're on this great, amazing tour that all of us have probably always wanted to be on and have this moment, but we're still just us.

"And when you were a young actor imagining this moment of glory, I think you somehow thought that you would transform into some elegant swan, but it's still just the you that you've always been. And in a way, that's quite liberating."

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Zwangobani has been part of the development of That Was Friday since the beginning - the first part of which was at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic and before the actress knew she would be flying to New Zealand to film the Amazon Prime series.

But the initial idea came before that, when Eliza Sanders came across a poem written by a childhood friend, a Jewish Australian woman who was visiting Israel for the first time.

The poem itself just tracked the poet throughout the day - it wasn't a big day, it just tracked the small things that occurred. But there was something about the poetic language that drew Eliza Sanders in.

"It was the infantile small day-to-day moments in this broader context of identity and belonging and how we connect to ancestral homelands that we may - as our physical body - have never been to before," she says.

"And at the time, I was travelling nonstop, I was basically in a new city every two weeks, and I'd arrive in cities that I'd never been to before and I would feel such a sense of familiarity and such a sense of home.

"There was this juxtaposition of feeling at home in a strange place and strange in a homeland, and the different types of homelands that we can have - the places that we've lived, the places that our ancestors have come from, and then in queer communities, the places that have become chosen homelands - because queer identities are so much less connected to ancestral identities."

For a two-page poem to inspire an entire theatre production, Charley Sanders says it's interesting how little the initial idea has changed.

Yes, it has grown - from a pure storyline point of view, there needed to be more meat on the That Was Friday script than the poem. But at its core, it's still this tale about connections.

And perhaps that's because this trio of creatives, who are more often than not travelling for work, found themselves all in their hometown of Canberra to create That Was Friday. Or perhaps it's the fact that the need for connection and community has become highlighted so acutely in recent years through the pandemic.

"It's a tender work that's grown out of these three years of global trauma and separation, and isolation," Charley Sanders says.

"We've been describing it as a warm hug on a cold night and every day in the rehearsal room, I'm reminded of how true that is. It's about community, it's about family, it's about connection, it's about sharing space with people in your body."

That Was Friday is at Belconnen Arts Centre on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 7pm. Tickets from belcoarts.com.au.

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