Productions

National Theatre of Parramatta and Performance 4a present

Who Speaks For Me?

“……one of the most heartwarming things on stage this year…Their stories remind the audience of the resilience at the heart of the refugee and migrant experience.”  ★★★★ timeout.com/sydney

Discover the unexpected stories of Western Sydney in this intimate multi-lingual, multi-generational storytelling show.

Through the personal narratives and photographs of three families from Cambodia, Vietnam and Bhutan
Who Speaks For Me? explores the vagaries of language – the powerlessness of those who do not have it,
the nuances lost in translation, and the sometimes hilarious consequences of misunderstanding it.

Yasukichi Murakami

Through a Distant Lens

“…a compelling and always absorbing work…” STAGE NOISE

 

We take so many photographs. How do we know which ones are important, which ones matter?

After a sell out season at Darwin Festival and rave reviews at Shinju Matsuri Festival Broome, OzAsia Festival Adelaide, and Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company, Mayu Kanamori's multilayered work Yasukichi Murakami - Through a Distant Lens returned to the stage at Riverside Theatres Parramatta in March 2016.

Kanamori goes in search of the missing photographs of Yasukichi Murakami - a Japanese-Australian photographer, entrepreneur and inventor, who lived in northern Australia from 1897 until his internment in 1941 - in order to tell the largely forgotten story of the early Japanese in Australia.  Utilising photographic and video projections, sound design, live music and actors, photographs come to life in a conversation between a photographer from the past and one from the present.

“…a dramaturgically crystalline and ultimately moving meditation on place, photography and the politics of recognition.” REAL TIME

Stories Then & Now

"Stories Then & Now is not only nourishing theatrically, but socially.
It's important work. Vital, in every sense." 

Directed by master storyteller and celebrated photographer William Yang and writer and producer Annette Shun Wah, Stories Then & Now is an inspiring theatre work bringing together six Asian Australians to tell personal stories from their past to unravel the threads that lead to their present day lives.