WAR CRIMES

What do you do when your country is at war, your town is at war, your friends are at war and there's a war inside your head? You run. One morning Jade wakes bruised and bleeding on the beach. She thinks she's alone, that no one will know, but someone is watching from the cave above the cliffs.

In 2007, in response to a spate of attacks on war memorials in towns and cities across Australia, a war memorial legislation amendment bill was proposed in parliament, increasing penalties for vandalising, defacing, deliberately damaging or behaving inappropriately around war memorials. While the bill was not passed, it inflamed debate over the ANZAC legend and sparked a call for a resurgence of pride in this national story.
War Crimes was created in response to this and several other real contemporary Australian events, with the intention of stirring up some big questions about our national history, identity and future. Importantly, it raises the question of what is sacred to us as a nation?

An exciting opportunity...

Observing a rehearsal process is a special privilege, one that I embraced when I heard about the work that Laticia Caceres and her cast were doing on War Crimes.

The tragic nature of the events which inspired the play: the plight of refugees, the effects of war on both the individual and the nation, the struggle for identity, the importance of ‘home’ and the vast differences in perception are all explored through Angela Betizen’s script and rendered brilliantly by the cast.