This Australian group revolutionised theatre. Now the world has noticed

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The Venice Biennale Teatro, the planetary pinnacle of unrecorded performance, had a circumstantial petition for a small determination Australian theatre institution for this year’s festival.

It asked Back to Back, a institution comprising intellectually disabled and neurodiverse actors, to execute its accumulation of FOOD COURT, prompted successful portion by a real-life 2006 lawsuit successful which 12 teenagers successful Werribee bullied and humiliated a 17-year-old miss with a developmental disability, selling DVDs of the filmed assault.

It is 1 of their astir critically lauded works, an probe of bullying and battle connected radical with disabilities, a taxable profoundly idiosyncratic for its creators. It has, until now, relied upon a luminous, inflatable acceptable that dramatically skewers assemblage perspective, but past period Italian customs held up the set, implicit a freight value issue. It wouldn’t beryllium disposable successful time.

Back to Back Theatre performs FOOD COURT successful Venice as portion of the Biennale Tetro’s 52nd International Theatre Festival.

So Back to Back presented the enactment to discerning Venice theatregoers connected a bare stage, with creator manager Bruce Gladwin deciding against making a code to audiences connected wherefore the acceptable was absent. FOOD COURT mislaid nary of its power, arsenic actors Sarah Goninon and Tamika Simpson’s unnamed characters, dressed successful golden bodysuits, bullied histrion Sarah Mainwaring’s quality Leslie, demanding she portion bare and dance.

It’s this “poetic ferocity” and the group’s “visionary parables” that person driven the Venice Biennale to grant the Geelong-based troupe the highest level of recognition: the Golden Lion.

On signifier successful a gothic 15th period palace fronting Venice’s Grand Canal, Gladwin and 5 actors accepted the prestigious grant for beingness achievement, which places them among an elite assemblage of visionary planetary theatre makers, each recognised for challenging theatre conventions and revealing hidden truths successful their art.

Each of the actors took turns holding the grant connected stage, aft Biennale Teatro creator directors Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte work the grant citation successful Italian, the translation of which includes the line: “Our fears, our puritanical blindness, each of these are blown distant by Back to Back Theatre’s cruel tales of perilous worlds.”

Members of Back to Back Theatre judge the prestigious Golden Lion for beingness achievement.

Most of the Geelong company’s touring enactment of 20 had arrived successful benignant via velocity vessel h2o taxis for the ceremony, staged successful the ballroom astatine the Venice Biennale’s headquarters. Staying for the past week astatine the 16th period Hotel Casa Verardo, they performed doubly astatine the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale.

Since its motorboat successful 1987, Back to Back has garnered 22 nationalist and planetary awards, including the International Ibsen Award successful 2022, touring the satellite with productions including tiny metallic objects, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes and the Helpmann award-winning Ganesh Versus the Third Reich.

“When we spell marque the adjacent work, it feels similar we’re starting each implicit again,” says Gladwin, who has helmed the institution for 25 years.

Since its motorboat successful 1987, Back to Back has garnered 22 nationalist and planetary awards. L-R Sarah Goninon, Tamika Simpson, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price.

Scott Price, who has spent 17 years with the company, says the Golden Lion is “a spot similar winning the AFL premiership oregon the NBL finals”. One of the FOOD COURT’s archetypal devisors, helium recalls helium excessively had a horrific clip astatine school. “We had a schoolhouse adjacent doorway afloat of naughty kids, and they targeted maine constantly.”

Mainwaring, who has been with Back to Back for 17 years, and was different of the show’s archetypal creators successful 2008, said she felt “strong” connected stage, contempt the bullying, expressing her character’s individuality successful defiance of her tormenters.

The nudity didn’t occupation her, adjacent though her assemblage was much exposed connected the bare stage. “I knew the steps done it, and I knew that it was hard and confronting, but not confronting for maine arsenic an actor.”

Powerful, too, was the denouement, erstwhile Mainwaring’s character, near for dead, finds her dependable aft presenting passim the play arsenic mute. She yet speaks by reciting the “be not afeard” code from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

It is simply a moving, poetic refusal to beryllium defined by violence. “Sounds and saccharine airs, that springiness delight, and wounded not,” says Mainwaring. “I cried to imagination again.”

Sarah Mainwaring performs FOOD COURT successful Venice.

This has been a singular twelvemonth for Australian artists successful Venice. In April, Kamilaroi/Bigambul creator Archie Moore was awarded Australia’s archetypal Golden Lion astatine the Venice Biennale for champion nationalist information for his installation enactment kith and kin, and astatine the Venice Film Festival successful August-September, manager Peter Weir volition person a Golden Lion for beingness achievement.

Steve Dow was a impermanent of the Biennale Teatro.

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