This project for ATYP has been in development with Youth Action over the course of a year. Youth Action works towards a society where all young people in NSW are supported, engaged, valued, and have their rights respected. The conversations with young people from Marrickville to Moree about their interactions with the law would reveal complex relationships. What has come out of the work of Yuwaalaraay playwright Hannah Belanszky, is so much more. They had been to jail, to court, interviewed by police, waiting for parents, elders, court dates, bail conditions to pass, but what Hannah found was they wanted someone to listen to them and their stories to be heard. Hannah, George Kemp (ATYP) and Veronica Gorden (Youth Action) have been their witness.
The work is fiction, but briefly speaking with George Kemp he would agree they are all true stories. These young people need our time and our compassion. Sharing these short vignettes is a start, cleverly bookended with the lives of two young friends. We return for the play’s conclusion to these now young men, wanting to claim home.
Directed so sensitively by Abbie-lee Lewis, we cannot but be moved by the engaging exchanges of the characters. Four wonderful young actors play all the parts, simply reset with a costume change and basic set pieces or lighting shifts beautifully designed by Morgan Moroney. They have all the nuanced charisma of the original story-tellers, no doubt. They are funny, charming, hopeless dreamers. Each with a tale that could easily be one life, the overlaps are seamless, and I was never confused as to who was who. Bravo ATYP’s Indigenous actors Maliyan Blair, Nyasha Ogden, Wesley Patten and pacific Islander Ioane Sa’ula.
The origin stories are not solely those of Aboriginal Young people, but as Director Abbie-Lee Lewis says “It breaks my heart to have had to cast the majority of this play’s characters with indigenous actors, but by doing so we have represented the statistics and the realities of the youth justice system as it is.”
SAPLINGS is a terrific title. Young bending branches, Young and slender, with a way to go in their growing. They need light, water, and appropriate support to get there.
This play is authentic, raw, brutal, and very moving. The soundtrack in transitions of Rap and Hip Hop also plays its part. I do hope ATYP can successfully tour this play. It needs to be taken from Marrickville to Moree and back!
Playing in ATYP’s Rebel Theatre as the 2024 ATYP season starter and a part of Sydney Festival, continues until February 4. Reviewed by Elizabeth Surbey 27/01/2024
Run Time – 80 mins no interval / Age recommendation – 14+
Production content – Coarse language (searing). References to drug use, haze, and loud noises, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patrons are advised this production contains names of people that are deceased.
For more information, check out the Sydney Festival Website.