Every year the OzAsia Festival brings great, thought provoking works to Adelaide audiences. The 2022 program will be no different.
The Demon, an Adelaide premiere, is set in modern-day Sydney, where Chinese Australian street fighter Wei takes two detectives – Arab Australian Jihad and his Aboriginal Muslim partner Matthew/Muhummad – on a road trip to Burrangong, the region of the infamous Lambing Flat Riots of 1861, a dark night where violence erupted against Chinese gold miners. Here, they must confront the landscape and its demons to ask themselves: does a curse inhabit a land or its people?
I was very fortunate to speak to The Demon’s writer, Mohammed Ahmad, to unpack this thought-provoking production and to find out where the ideas for this show originated.
“The Demon is based on events around a massacre that took place in 1861 in the south western plains of NSW in the Burrangong region. What happened is that some Chinese gold diggers were targeted by white settlers who had become increasingly resentful at how successful the Chinese had become. So the settlers went and committed a massacre towards these Chinese gold diggers and their families. This incident is known as the The Lambing Flat riots. From that piece of history, we have written a story about a gold nugget that has been unearthed during the massacre, and it releases, both symbolically and physically on stage, a demon. It’s a reflection of xenophobia. The story is about First Nations communities, Asian-Australian communities and Muslim-Australian communities all experiencing, at different points of time, this demon, and then working together to bury the gold and the curse that has been unleashed.
“In addition to all the massacres that have happened to the First Nations people throughout history, the Lambing Flat riot is the largest massacre to ever have happened on Australian soil. It’s one of those moments of history that reflects the very dark history of Australian xenophobia and racism. What people usually remember is the Cronulla Riots in 2005, one of the biggest race-based riots of recent years, but they are unaware of the dark history of the country.”
The creative process to bring The Demon to the stage has been over ten years in the making.
“It’s taken us about ten years to write this show. Because it took so long to write, it was interesting to watch history manifest itself again during the process of creating The Demon. For example, in 2019 there was the Christchurch Massacre, and then we had COVID causing riots around the country, and following that there were the Black Lives Matter protests around the world. So history that happened hundreds of years ago all started to reemerge with these recent events, and we were able to draw on that in our writing.”
With such strong themes running throughout The Demon, touching on some dark moments in our history, Mohammed explained to me why he believes collaborative writing is vital when bringing these stories to the stage.
“I personally don’t feel that people should create work that touches on the themes in The Demon without it being collaborative. When I was growing up, the arts community was overwhelmingly white, and any time content like in The Demon was looked at, they would bring in a ‘community consultant’. This basically was the token person of colour on the creative team. Thankfully, this is outdated. The way a lot of work now is produced is with collaboration, where the communities themselves are creating the works. What I’m so proud of with The Demon is that all the communities who are represented in the show (First Nation, Asian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, and Anglo-Australian communities) have all come together in different roles as writers, directors, actors, stage management, and set design. It’s a very cross-culture collaboration. I think that is why this work is so strong; all the communities represented have come together to make the work.”
The Demon brings together the talents of award-winning novelist Mohammed Ahmad, acclaimed theatre director Rachael Swain, and choreographer of filming and surrealist dance theatre Gavin Webber. This powerful production speaks to the challenges we all face as a multicultural, multi-faith, and multi-racial Australian society.
The Demon will be part of the 2022 OzAsia Festival. Performing at the Space Theatre between October 20 – 22. Tickets can be purchased through https://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/the-demon/ .
Interviewed by: Ben Stefanoff
Photo Credit: Anna Kucera
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