Presented in partnership by the Australian Theatre for Young People and Youth Action, the world premiere of Saplings was staged at the Rebel Theatre with Hannah Belanszky, a Yuwaalaaray playwright, and Kalkadoon director Abbie-Lee Lewis. With a combined background in Shakespearan storytelling and art that champions feminist and First Nations voices, together they spent a year researching and interviewing young people across NSW youth service centres to create a vignette of their multitudinous experiences.
There were only four young actors in Saplings, aged between seventeen and twenty, who played over half a dozen characters each throughout the performance. These people were not professional actors, but the show they put on felt immersive and honest. The stories were blunt, sincere and diverse in portraying the struggles that each character faced, shining a spotlight on children entangled in the prison system.
In a dialogue reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, the first scene featured two boys, played by Maliyan Blair and Wesley Patten, who appeared only at the play’s beginning and end. They were seated around a bonfire, with absolutely bugger-all to pass the time, except reckless parkour over said bonfire. Blair suggested several ideas – the servo, the park, hotwiring cars – but they had done it all before. Patten asked if the two could go to Blair’s house. Blair declined because of a power cut.
The frustration from their lack of options culminated in Blair’s desire to go and watch TV, which Patten dubiously reminded Blair was not possible due to the lack of electricity. Blair’s look of dawning realisation resembled a nut-hoarding squirrel who had just discovered pantries. The sense of boredom and dissatisfaction with the mundane was echoed throughout the play, with one character saying: “I’m going crazy here. Nan’s teaching me how to crochet a blanket!”
We’re not in Glebe anymore, Toto.
The set design (Angela Doherty, Morgan Moroney) resembled concrete jungles with its rough-and-ready atmosphere and dilapidated infrastructure financed by a government so far away that they never had to suffer its bleak view. The stage, lit in cool and dark colours, was constructed from a tiered amphitheatre-style set of monotonous grey steps, set against a very convincing imitation of a concrete wall. The wall was intentionally deprived of paint, save for the partially scrubbed graffiti “BLAK + DEADLY”.
Three pots were built into the stage where four saplings of native Australian trees, including eucalyptus and banksia, had been planted before the show began. They were later taken out after the first scene and replaced in the final scene by more mature and blossomed saplings, bringing to life the transitory arcs of the characters.
The costume design by Doherty used many casual, loose fabrics, and a few costumes for breaking into houses. One such outfit was a matching grey and black jumper-sweatpant combination, which looked enviably comfortable. Michael Weir, composer and sound designer, chose several rap and R&B songs throughout the play and also composed some original songs that were sung by the cast – all of which I would definitely add to my Spotify playlist.
The play formed a tapestry of various characters, and between each scene the actors would transform into new characters. Occasionally earlier characters would be revisited, but it was often difficult for the audience to familiarise themselves with their names and stories in such a short amount of time without becoming lost. Signposting may have helped the viewer to become more anchored within the shifting stories and their overall relevance to the scene.
I was deeply impressed by the actors, whose talents seemed disproportionate to their youth. They were in their late teens and early twenties, but they portrayed characters who could be as young as thirteen and already mired in the prison system. The challenges that they faced in portraying these stories onstage was in stark contrast to the challenges of the characters themselves, who were much younger and facing struggles the likes of which are hard to imagine without prior experience.
Ioane Sa’ula was a standout, deeply convincing in his roles and admirable as an actor in his own right. Saula’s abrupt sense of humour helped ease the tension during darker moments, and provided a much-needed source of relief amidst the play’s exploration of sensitive topics. His monologue became one of the strongest scenes, where he regressed into his boyhood under the harsh lights of the police interview room while explaining that he had broken his house arrest because there was nothing in his house to eat: “If Josh hadn’t eaten my noodles, I wouldn’t be here.” The ease with which the audience sympathised with him was partly because of his frank and endearing personality. More importantly, it was due to his fervent passion for mee goreng that was strongly reminiscent of the ebullient gourmets who frequent Spice Alley and take twenty minutes to choose a dish each time. Respect.
Sa’ula and Blair executed the dialogue as though it were a natural conversation. Blair’s vocals were sometimes strained with effort, but the energy he channelled into his characters made him easy to recognise as a real teenager whose main concern was finding a way to occupy his time without succumbing to the risk of juvenile prison. Actress Nyasha Ogden was focused on her grasp of multiple characters, and remained calm under pressure despite the occasional stumble.
The topics that these actors discussed made them appear much older than they were, and the audience was only able to reconcile with their vulnerability when their age was revealed.
For example, one scene featured a brother and sister waiting at a train station for their mother, who was being released from prison after many years. The brother was reluctant to see his mother for reasons unclear to the sister, but as she pressed him for details, he revealed that the crimes that caused his mother to go to jail had involved her using his twelve-year-old self as an accomplice. The brother, now a young adult, never had the opportunity to admit this to his sister, rendering this truth a burden that must be buried. In turn, this corrupted the brother’s relationship with his mother, even as his unaware sister longed for them to remain close.
It was difficult to watch such a scene and be reminded that the people playing these characters were so young; that the characters themselves were even younger; and that their younger selves enduring crime and prison were simply children. This was where the play was at its most powerful, when it made these stories come to life in a way that showed the rich complexity of the familial relations and the tensions between ambitions, obligations and the injustice of poverty and unequal privilege.
As one of the interviewees who inspired the play stated, “We’re not invisible, we don’t want to be criminals, we’re just kids.”
Saplings played at The Rebel Theatre from January 24 until February 4, 2024, as part of the Sydney Festival.