Prehistoric

Prehistoric is a landmark show; a fierce punk-driven piece of theatre, set in Brisbane and looking back in time during Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen’s reign of brutal law enforcement, across the state of Queensland.

An Elbow Room production, written and directed by Marcel Dorney, Prehistoric is back for another season before heading off to Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. It was a Green Room Award winner for writing and new production in 2015, after its debut in Brisbane the previous year.

Prehistoricstrongly resonates with the punk and sociopolitical movement during  1979-80, with a deliberate focus on the now and how these experiences still resonate with the youth of today. Brisbane’s thriving punk music scene was headlined by The Saints, who released their third studio album Prehistoric in 1979. Dorney has written a significant historical dramatization of events that have shaped the Australian music scene.

Four feisty disenfranchised characters band together to make music. Deb Station (Brigid Gallacher) jeopardizes her job at the university; Peter Fender (Zachary Pidd) a working class punk drummer; Nick Everything (Sahil Saluja) just wants to play his guitar; Rachel Privilege (Grace Cummings) is from Sydney and gives up her studies to fight for the cause and front the band. The actors exude a bold and savage honesty in these resilient characterizations of people who were real and fought hard to maintain their creative and cultural rights.

Elbow Room, in its tenth year in theatre production, has consistently produced innovative theatre andPrehistoric is no exception, exploring a polemical insight into arts and politics.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Yunis Tmeizeh