'WE ARE THE GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE'

The countdown begins!
7-On's new immersive promenade show opens in just one month's time.

'We Are The Ghosts Of The Future' began life in 2009. Inspired by the now famous photography exhibition at Sydney's Justice And Police Museum, called City Of Shadows (curator, Peter Doyle), we took it upon ourselves to create a theatrical response to the extraordinary images. For those who don't know, it's a collection of mugshots and crime scenes photographed in the course of duty by police photographers, from the 1930s and '40s.

The Sydney Theatre Company was our first supporter, giving us a luxurious two-week development under the direction of Lee Lewis, with composer Phillip Johnston, and the vast talents of the Residents, a group of young actors then in residence at the STC. We came out the other end with 'Long Shadows', an epic sprawling site-specific show, whose perfect incarnation was to be the old Darlinghurst Gaol, now the National Art School.

When that proved too logistically ambitious to pull off, we recreated the show as a very intimate site-specific work, this time to be performed in various rooms of an old terrace house. In the process, we moved away from the 'crime' aspect, becoming more drawn to the domestic side: the realities of life in Sydney in the '30s, the deprivations and privileges that were taken for granted, so different to life now. If we were to look at crime at all, it was the crimes of necessity that interested us, perpetrated mostly by women, like abortion and prostitution.

What began to emerge was the idea of a Sydney very different from the one we live in now, yet traces of it peeping through all over the city - a kind of palimpsest of the past. Where had they gone, these lives lived not so long ago, full of passion and rage, hunger and love and ambition? They're forgotten. Just as we, living as if no one ever came before or will follow, occupy this city now. But in a few decades, our lives and times will be erased and replaced. We are the ghosts of the future.

The idea of loss is embodied in the play by being set on 13.11.35 (the show's initial title), the day beloved aviator and national hero Charles Kingsford-Smith was officially declared 'missing'. Set in a boarding-house in The Rocks, the lodgers occupy separate rooms, and digest the news of Smithy's disappearance while living out their own struggles and delights.

We have teamed up with director Harriet Gillies and producer Stephen Carnell to bring 'We Are The Ghosts Of The Future' to The Rocks Village Bizarre Festival next month.

Watch this space for daily feeds of news and information about the show. Meanwhile: book your tix!

WHEN: November 13 - 29, 2015
WHERE: The Discovery Museum, 4-8 Kendall Lane, The Rocks
TICKETS: $20 / $25