Veronica’s Score: 3.5 Stars
Our Blood Runs In The Street is an often confronting work that addresses the targeting for violence and intimidation against the local LGBTIQ community in the last decades of the 20th century. It also touches on the role of institutional homophobia in the NSW police force and the social prejudice in the broader community that allowed offenders, in some cases as young as twelve, to literally get away with murder.
The heartbroken lovers, friends, parents, and extended families of victims – as well as survivors – have been waiting a long time for the delivery of justice and even recognition that these horrific acts took place. It was only in 2019 the NSW Legislative Council was moved to re-open the parliamentary inquiry into gay and transgender hate crimes between 1970 and 2010.
Here in the imitate space of the Old Fitz, director Shane Anthony and his team give these people a voice in the creation of a work based on recorded interviews with those left behind. The piece also includes the words of journalists such as Rick Feneley, who have continued to write investigative articles, along with activists and police officers who have fought to bring unsolved or often mislabelled offences to light.
The hours of collected content is now pared back to a well-paced 70 minutes, where elements of verbatim theatre are combined with physical performance. The talented and vital cast – Andrew Fraser, Cassie Hamilton, David Helman, Eddie Orton, Sam Plummer, Ross Walker, and Tim Walker – commit fully to the material.
Through the monologues and acted sequences, we are made aware of the shocking figure of at least 88 murders and the names and dates when lives were snuffed out. I personally wanted to know more about the victims. By revealing little more than their names, it seemed their identity was now defined by their deaths. It kept me at a distance. And while full of admiration for the precision of the movement routines and the grace and agility of the performers, I felt the pairing of styles was forced to uneasily co-exist at times. It also occurred to me at some point that the violence did not happen in a vacuum. I lived through it but wonder if the intensified homophobia of the era was really communicated by this production. Bigotry certainly was not only found in deprived neighbourhoods and, in fact, was sanctioned from the highest levels of society: the government, religious bodies, the law, and sections of the media.
Nevertheless, despite these reservations, there was much I was left to think about. I sincerely hope this passionate work finds a broad audience. It is undoubtedly a call to arms from a community no longer willing to accept a woeful response to violence committed against it.
Veronica Hannon, Theatre Now
