Justine Clarke stars in Julia, co-produced by the Sydney Theatre Company and Canberra Theatre Centre. It’s making a return season to the Playhouse from 31 July. Photo: Prudence Upton.
The smash-hit play Julia, which tells the story of Australia’s first female Prime Minister, is making a comeback in Canberra – the place where she cemented her place in the nation’s political history.
The Canberra Theatre Centre (CTC) has again teamed up with the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) to bring Joanna Murray-Smith’s work to the Playhouse stage.
Canberra audiences were the first to see the show when it had its world premiere last year – less than 3 km from Parliament House, where Ms Gillard gave her famous Misogyny Speech in 2012. In it, she described the then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as having “revolting double standards” on the issue of sexism.
Her speech sent shockwaves around the world.
“I thought after everything I have experienced, I have to listen to Tony Abbott lecture me about sexism? ” she said at the time. “That gave me the emotional start to the speech, and once I started, it took on a life of its own.”
In Julia, leading Australian actor Justine Clarke plays Ms Gillard in the lead-up to the famous speech, in a performance directed by the Helpmann Award-winning Sarah Goodes.
It proved a particular hit in Canberra as the home of the Federal Parliament. It was a sell-out and received rave reviews. It also told the story of the woman who changed Australia’s political landscape.
At last year’s world premiere of Julia in Canberra, playwright Joanna Murray-Smith told Region she was particularly interested in “the psychological state that allowed her [Ms Gillard] to get to that point of communicating her anger and frustration out loud”.
“The more I have read, the more research I have conducted, I have come to understand that what Julia Gillard managed to do in her time as Prime Minister was quite extraordinary under the circumstances.”
Justine Clarke and Jessica Bentley in a scene from the hit play Julia about the former Prime Minister. Photo: Prudence Upton.
Director Sarah Goodes, also speaking last year, said Ms Gillard was “ridiculed for her entire term in office – for her voice, her dress, her hair, for everything. No one could hear what she was saying, they could only hear how she was saying it”.
“You couldn’t talk about gender without being accused of complaining. You felt like you were being tokenistically given an opportunity because there was a quota to fill. If you got angry, you were accused of being hysterical.”
She said the commentary made on both Ms Gillard’s person and personal life by men was unlike anything this country had previously witnessed, with an exploration of the double standard sitting at the core of the play.
“Some people of a particular generation think the speech was just a political battle for power or something that was just about a particular set of circumstances, which it was, of course, but what it became was so much bigger.”
Julia returns to the Canberra Playhouse from 31 July to 10 August. Bookings available online.
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