The Audition review | Outer Urban Projects | La Mama Theatre

Working with emerging artists who were also asylum seekers and immigrants, Outer Urban Projects have brought together a mix of writers and actors to explore the process of auditioning through two different lenses. One of these being for performance roles and investigating the power plays that are present between an actor, director and audience, and the other being asylum seekers auditioning to be permitted to live in this country. 

The Audition includes work from seven theatre writers (Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves, Milad Norouzi, Patricia Cornelius, Sahra Davoudi, Tes Lyssiotis and Wahibe Moussa) that examine the commonalities of these auditions. While not all of these are as powerful or engrossing as they could be due to writing and/or performances, each story highlights various issues pertaining to asylum seekers and immigrants. In one, an Iranian woman (Sahra Davoudi) is reading for the role of Hecuba from Euripides’ The Trojan Women only to have the Australian director (Peter Paltos) force his western interpretation of what a victim should look and act like. Later, these two actors meet again as an immigration officer and an asylum seeker, where Davoudi must once pass an audition, this time to prove herself to be in need of asylum.