The Past is a Wild Party by Noëlle Janaczewska | At The Loading Dock

Trash and high art. Censorship. Gaps and silences. Girl on girl sex.

Following the successful tours of Good with Maps and The End of Winter, award-winning playwright Noëlle Janaczewska debuts an exciting new performance essay that takes us on a journey through archives, sexual politics, and a personal queer history.

Create your chosen family, fall a little bit in love with nineteenth-century poet Amy Levy, and immerse yourself in Lesbian pulp from the 1950s. This performance essay-cum-monologue mines the personal and historical power of Lesbian representation.

The Past is a Wild Party explores passionate friendships and whether a girl can be your boyfriend. Outing yourself - as someone with mental health issues. Reading The Well of Loneliness in your teens and looking for - let’s call it ‘technical information’ about girl-on-girl sex.

Director Kate Gaul

Lighting Designer Benjamin Brockman

Composer Madeleine Picard

Performed by Jules Billington

What the critics have said about Noëlle Janaczewska' work:

“… a complex, deeply rewarding piece of theatre, one that balances cerebral exuberance with shattering emotional power. “ The List

“Exquisitely written … one woman’s cerebral, deeply personal, poetic odyssey, in which she travels through the realms of childhood memories and forgotten histories, science and art, folklore and myth …” Audrey Journal

“ … an hour of intense and engrossing mind travel …  enlightening, often sobering, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Recommended.” Stage Noise

“ … an exquisite production, knotty, agrarian, and ideologically blasphemous .. it is untamed and necessary, lyrical, and intense. I found myself hanging off every word and surprised when it reached its end.” List Thatcher

Please note: Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th July are preview performances. Tickets to these performances are $30.

CONTENT WARNING: "The Past is a Wild Party" contains discussion or mental health and suicide. 

Suitable for audiences 16+

THERE IS A COMPLETE LOCKOUT TO THIS SHOW AT 7PM - LATECOMERS ART NOT ADMITTED

ABOUT SIREN THEATRE CO

Siren Theatre Co is an independent theatre company that commissions and produces new Australian plays, classics, work for young people and families, partners with producing and presenting organisations to give our vital artists and audiences bold imaginative experiences.

Siren is always evolving but these things hold true: the work would look ridiculous in other mediums; always tell a good story; keep the actor at the centre of the work; don’t add to the crap in the world; the work will be beautiful, rigorous, imaginative and timely.

Telling female - centred stories and interpreting plays through a female - centred lens is important. This is key to many programming decisions. Not exclusively. But preferably.