Michael Gow’sAwayis one of the most iconic plays in Australian cultural history.

Capturing the tumultuous period of change that occurred during the 1960s, it depicts three families and the struggles they face during a Christmas holiday – everything from the loss of love to the Vietnam War and death is explored with a solid injection of teenage angst. Sport For Jove co-director Samantha Young talks about the new Seymour Centre production and why Away is still part of school curriculums in 2016.

“It’s so funny, because one of the things that is so amazing about doing this play is that so many people have seen it, worked on it or been involved in some incarnation,” Young says. “We’ve just had our first two previews and they have been sold out. Schools are really wanting to come and see it – maybe because it’s been so long since it’s been done professionally in Sydney and maybe because of the reputation of Sport For Jove.”

Despite being a play set during the 1960s and published in the 1980s, Away is still highly regarded as a relevant piece of Australian theatre. With several generational gaps in play, how does Sport For Jove aim to keep it fresh in 2016? Will people still be able to relate?

“That has been a really interesting question for me: how do we do it now?” says Young. “How is an audience going to see it nowadays? That has been something we have really wanted to ask ourselves. What are people thinking about in Australia? Because it is so iconically Australian, it really captures an Australian sensibility well. What will our audience bring to it with new eyes?

“What really stood out for me is the xenophobia that Gow plays with within the play. There’s this tension between generations – you have the baby boomers and their parents who have radically different perspectives on what the world is going to be. Their parents’ generation have gone through two World Wars, the Great Depression and now the Vietnam War. The baby boomers are growing up in the most prosperous time in Australian history. So they really are diametrically opposed, but you have these big ideas of what Australia is at the time, and Michael Gow really distils these down to something that is very human, real and personable. That is what we took into the production dramaturgically.”

Changing the context and setting is a theatrical technique that has been in vogue for a while now, but it wouldn’t necessarily work for Away.

“I don’t think you can take the play out of 1967 – it is such a specific year,” says Young. “We have these gorgeous costumes and fabulous props from that era. But I do think it has a larger resonance – you can focus on different elements without changing the time and place.”

In truth, those elements Young describes never really change. Technology may evolve, but at the end of the day, human beings are dealing with the same basic struggles – particularly teenagers, who are a focal point of the text.

“I love schools audiences because they’re so human,” says Young. “As teenagers you’re growing up, feeling weird about all of this stuff. You are dealing with this newfound power of becoming an adult, feeling weird about dating and your body. Any of those moments of vulnerability that are onstage, teenagers really resonate with. I can’t even count how many applauses we had during the matinee I watched today with people either kissing or fighting with each other – high emotional states where teenagers are just drawn to that vulnerability. They’re a real truth barometer. I think in keeping the production really truthful and making sure the acting is really detailed, nuanced and alive, our school audiences have been responding really well so far.”

Raw human emotion really is timeless, and this play and its continued popularity proves as much. Our surroundings may change, but the basic concepts are as familiar as ever.

“The content of what we’re talking about is different – we might bicker now about someone losing the iPad, but back then it would have been the camera,” laughs Young. “It actually really is important as well that this play is set in a time that’s before mobile phones, before internet, because it really opened up Australia culturally to move with the times faster than we were able to before we could access so much information. At that time we have a really iconic sense of what it is to be Australian. I think it’s really important to this play to have that sacredness to it.”

This may be the fundamental reason why Away continues to be performed and studied, but Young believes there’s even more to it.

“I think another [reason] is the scale of it. Whilst it is a family drama, it’s three sets of families. Then you bring in the elements of it – magical changes happen through it, you have fairies that tear the place apart, you have storm, you have summer, you have ocean. Imaginatively, the play is huge in scale, and that’s an amazing thing for an Australian play to be and I think that’s another reason why we keep bringing it back.”

[Away photo by Marnya Rothe]

Away runs Wednesday June 22 – Saturday June 25 atSeymour Centre.

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