The sickly sweet smell of musk perfume hangs in the air at The Old Fitz Theatre on the night it hosts the premiere of SISTREN, the playwriting debut of actress, model and writer Iolanthe. The source of the scent — a ribbon-adorned audience member in the next row over — quickly becomes apparent, but it could just have easily been an element of the show’s olfactory set design. Before the lights even go down, I’m transported back to the days of liberally applied Victoria’s Secret body spray, touching up lip gloss in a photo booth webcam, and eyebrow plucking tutorials in the back of drama classrooms.
Proust can keep his madeleine cakes. Iolanthe and the rest of the team deploy Gen Z slang, rhinestoned acrylic nails, and a discerning arrangement of internet humour to breathe new life into adolescent nostalgia. Herein lies the magic of SISTREN: a meticulous and lovingly drawn portrait of girlhood that offers something more nourishing and closer in kind to the real thing than the very white, very cisgender renderings that have gained traction on TikTok and Instagram.
The events of the play unfold over a single afternoon in a South London school, revolving around the dynamic between Isla (played by Iolanthe), a seventeen year old British-Carribean girl, and her transgender best friend Violet (Janet Anderson). The pair are also friends in real life but for Iolanthe, now in her mid-20s, it was important to tell the story of friendship between black and transgender women from the perspective of schoolgirls.
“I’m really interested theatrically in seeing characters have a thought or realisation for the first time. I feel that having them [be aged] as 17 enabled me to be able to discuss the complexities of having a sister who exists outside of your identity in a way that was revelatory.” She tells Honi Soit in an interview ahead of the play’s premiere.
“[In real life] Janet and I have sat and we have talked and talked and talked, and we’ve imagined ourselves and reimagined ourselves, and we have the language for it, and we’re self aware of the lines between us. I think the gap between 17 and 25 is the part where you start having all the words to describe your identity, and the part where you can talk about your traumas without weeping, and the part where you can even name the fact that you have trauma, whereas these 17 year old girls aren’t yet aware of it. In the 90 minute duration of the play, they become aware of a lot.”
Like generations of teenage girls before them, Isla and Violet turn to a pastiche of cultural references to describe the feelings they don’t have the words for yet, with a hilarious and jarring level of source agnosticism. We ricochet from a spirited reenactment of Tiffany Pollard’s infamous takedown of Gemma Collins on the 2016 season of Celebrity Big Brother to the cruel exchange of jabs bound up in racism and transphobia.
The play constantly reminds us that while Isla and Violet’s friendship may have a long history, so too does trauma and bigotry. This is a dynamic Iolanthe repeatedly toys with as her characters attempt to demarcate the bounds of their friendship from those that the world superimposes upon it. In this way, SISTREN bends time and form to bring audiences into a world that is entirely context dependent and simultaneously all the girls’ own.
“Diassocation is a huge theme in the play. I allow my characters to enter the absurd through the facts that their brains take these big leaps from what’s happening in reality to a meme they’ve seen or just a funny concept to do these bits, and then bits on the bits,” Iolanthe explains, when asked about the play’s deviation from traditional narrative structures. “I think that’s something quite relatable for particularly women or people in society who don’t feel seen in reality or feel silenced in certain parts of reality.”
Bending the rules is also a point of personal pride. “I hate rules. Since I was tiny, I didn’t want to be told to tell the truth. I want to lie!” she says. “I think the whole purpose of SISTREN for me is to prove that you can break every single etiquette or theater regulation and rule, and [have the play] still be fabulous, still be moving, and still be relatable.”
While SISTREN breaks rules on stage, the playwright also hopes she can change the traditions of Australia’s often stuffy and risk-averse theatre scene. “I think that the people who hold power in this country are archaic and often white, and they have a desire to see themselves reflected.”
In addition to holding power, this narrow demographic also holds the purse strings. Despite the popularity of English authors and dramatists like Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo, Michaela Coel, and Jasmine Lee-Jones (whose play seven methods of killing kylie jenner had a sold out Sydney run which Iolanthe starred in), Australian cultural power-brokers have been somewhat slow to capitalise on the public appetite for the work of black female artists.
“There’s a huge demographic of black queer people. There’s a huge demographic of young trans women. You can still earn money [producing such works]”, Iolanthe tells me. It’s no exaggeration: at the time of writing, the entire season of SISTREN is sold out.
Iolanthe has plans to pitch the play as a proof of concept for a TV show in the UK immediately after it closes, before coming back to Australia for the premiere of the Stan Original Series He Had It Coming. There’s also plans for a Springtime return to stage in The Edit as part of Belvoir Street Theatre’s 25A program.
Will Iolanthe stay in Australia long term? It’s a difficult question. “I think the complex thing for me is they are so much more ready in the UK, there’s a lot more black women in casting, there’s a lot more black women in producing. There’s a lot more black women in positions of power and wealth that would be able to philanthropically help me.”
As migratory trends go, Australia losing its best creatives to the brighter lights of the West End, Hollywood, and Broadway is as predictable as the throngs of French backpackers who descend upon harbourside hostels, or the annual pilgrimage of Brunswick flatsharers to the ketamine mecca of Berlin. However, Iolanthe is insistent that more can and should be done by government arts agencies if Sydney wants to build and retain a vibrant community of dramatists.
“Despite the fact that everyone says they want to amplify trans voices and black voices or culturally and linguistically diverse work, not a drop of government funding went towards [the play]”. Iolanthe gained philanthropic and creative support from others sources to make SISTREN, including the Griffin Lookout program and the Australian Plays Transform Untold Stories Program.
“I hate to end on a depressing note, and I don’t think it has to be, because SISTREN is full of so much joy”, she concludes.
For now at least, a depressing end to Australia’s brush with the wonderful world of SISTREN has been averted. Iolanthe has planned a closing night party at Bar Freda’s on 12th July, replete with Caribbean DJs, black femme DJs, trans and black performers, lip sync artists, and two pole dancers for good measure. The opening bars of Twelve Days of Christmas begin to play in my head as she rattles off the lineup. This seems to be the desired effect: if Iolanthe can change anything about Australian theatre culture in the immediate short term, it’s to make it more like a party.
“The origins of theatre [are that] it is where people are meant to engage and connect. Australia has this etiquette stick up its butt. SISTREN opens with an acknowledgement of country and then a fabulous message from one of my best friends, Nancy, saying, ‘If you silence someone or shush someone, you can get out’.”
SISTREN is showing at The Old Fitz Theatre until July 12.
