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After becoming the first playwright to win the Victorian Prize for Literature, Darwin writer Mary Anne Butler has returned to the Top End for the world premiere of her new play.
The Sound of Waiting centres on the continued experiences of asylum seekers around the world as they put themselves in danger in the search for safety.
Like her award-winning piece Broken, Butler's new play explores the theme of resilience — this time through the story of a father making a treacherous journey across the ocean in pursuit of freedom, all while an angel of death watches on.
"I think the difference with this [play] was hearing a quote by Tony Abbott on Q&A in 2010 when there was an audience question posed to him and that audience question was what would Jesus do with asylum seekers?" Butler said.
Mr Abbott's answer was that "Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone's place to come to Australia".
"I remember this sort of lightning bolt of fury hitting me in the chest.
"You know the anger that someone would use their personal Christian framework to justify their political perspective and given that Jesus, we're taught, was a character of compassion and empathy, that he uses this character to sort of justify what I felt were unempathetic policies and heartless policies."
But it wasn't until a year later that Butler acted on her passion.
"I felt very strongly that I didn't have the right to write it because it wasn't my story to tell," she said.
"Then after a year of grinding my teeth at three o'clock in the morning I thought it's absolutely my story to tell, this is my country too."
For lead actor and former asylum seeker, Osamah Sami, Butler's fears were ultimately unfounded.
"Often it feels like, 'Oh, here's another Anglo-Saxon writer who googled poor refugees, hit enter and read seven articles and then copied and pasted them into a play or a script' and this wasn't the case," Sami said.
"I knew who Mary Anne was... so I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't know it was going to be that good.
"That authentic voice, it's kind of, I don't know how she did it to be honest because the character that I play who's a refugee is written so well.
"I didn't get the sense that a white person had written this."
This is the second time Butler has worked with local independent theatre company Browns Mart through a program designed to foster and develop Top End artists.
The first was for Broken which, as well as earning Butler the prize for literature, also took out the Victorian Premier's Award for Drama.
For Butler, the program is an example of the collegiality and support the tight-knit arts community in Darwin offers.
"We're totally punching above our weight," she said.
"There's this incredible beauty and joy when people do well and when people don't do well it's like, 'Oh come on, get back on your feet', you know, 'you'll do better next time'."
"It's that sort of sense of genuine support and encouragement."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, theatre, darwin-0800, nt