When

2023: Untold Stories, Australian Plays Transform, further development

2023: Untold Stories, Shark Island Retreat, Australian Plays Transform

Creative team

Writer Michele Lee

About

Format

Full-length play, stage

Content

Chu’s Party is a re-purposing of David Williamson’s iconic Don’s Party. In Williamson’s play, a group of middle-class suburban Australians gather to watch the 1969 election results. As they proposition each other, and discuss their lives and professions, they watch the telly for the election results hopeful for Whitlam winning and for the Australian Labor Party to take government for the first time in decades. However, by the end of the play, most of the sexual propositions have flopped and Gorton has won, continuing a Liberal government.

In Chu’s Party, a group of cosmopolitan international Asian students and graduates gather to watch the 1975 election results – Whitlam has now been in power since the 1972 election but he’s just been dismissed as Prime Minister and a caretaker government is in place. On the night of this election, as the students proposition each other, discuss their lives and studies, how will Whitlam fare, what will an Australian government do for the South East Asian people displaced by the Vietnam War. Who at the party stays in Australia, who goes home.