“The point being made in my song ‘iLL Manors’ is that society needs to take some responsibility for the cause of these riots. Why are there so many kids in the county that don’t feel they have a future, or care about having a criminal record? I think one of the reasons is that there is a very public prejudice in this country towards the underclass.
"These kids are ridiculed in the press as they aren’t as educated as others, because they talk and dress in a certain way ... but they’re not as stupid as people think. They are aware of the ill feelings towards them and that makes them feel alienated. I know because I felt it myself growing up. These kids have been beaten into apathy. They don’t care about society because society has made it very clear that it doesn’t care about them.”
Full of the violence and drug abuse he grew up surrounded by, ‘iLL Manors’ isn’t a film for the faint hearted.
“I have known a lot of nasty characters. Some get arrested, some die, but they are just replaced,” Drew told The Telegraph. “Either you stay in that circle and get blinded by the madness or you get out, like I did, and that is what the film is about. There is a lot of stuff based on my own experience that I had to take out. I didn’t want to send people away from the cinema with a total feeling of dread and darkness.
"I have lost quite a few childhood friends to heroin and crack; I even tried getting one of my friends clean for 12 months, only for him to throw it back in my face. My experience with heroin addicts, trying to get a person you love off drugs, isn’t a positive one.
“I know a girl who had a crack baby, and I know a whole generation of kids from a village in Essex taking their parents’ cars and money and driving into London to pick up serious drugs. The parents had moved to get away from it, but their kids still go back. Your kids aren’t safe anywhere.
"In my eyes, the reality is even harder and more painful than what we show in the film, but you don’t want to send people home from the cinema feeling like they want to kill themselves. You need to bring some light and some hope to the film, although for me that side of it is the fairy tale, not the reality. People who don’t know this environment wouldn’t believe what really goes on.”
When asked who ‘iLL Manors’ was for, Drew didn’t hesitate in telling The Guardian that it’s for the kids that are living the life of the characters in the film.
“These kids are angry and fucked up and I am angry and fucked up. But I'm starting to calm down and I'm starting to see the bigger picture. I want to give them some knowledge and wisdom. You might say, ‘Get over yourself, Plan B!’ Whatever, cool. I know that for me to want to teach another human being is not coming from a negative place.
"As human beings, we're compelled to teach and to learn, that's part of the beauty of being human. What the fuck is the point of us being here if we're not going to learn nothing or pass nothing on?”
‘iLL Manors’ is available now. Plan B plays Parklife at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens September 29.
After five years in Melbourne, Jessi Lewis is happy to return to his hometown of Brisbane for his latest multidisciplinary work ‘Return’.
“[Audiences] can expect something really visual. It’s really stylised, there’s elements of film woven in between, something like 38 prop cues. There’s amazing lighting, I’m operating the lighting myself as well, so basically they’re walking into a studio space but walking into a world which is really, really idiosyncratic and centralised around the pivotal scenes. There’s dance, physical theatre, you name it — it’s all interwoven into one, and electro, there is a lot of electro,” Lewis says.
Written between Melbourne and Brisbane, the work is inspired by late nights in Melbourne but also draws upon childhood memories of Brisbane at night, the EKKA Ferris Wheel, and fireworks on the river. “It was lots of late nights in Melbourne and having to walk home seedy as fuck. Something about the night time, nightclubs, just getting wasted and going out, but then having to deal with the next morning when you feel like shit. Then from those sort of like moments, really drawing upon them and those emotions to build something I think a lot of people could relate to,” he says.
“It’s all about personal reflection but it’s a double entendre of story lines whereby there’s a double metaphor played out on stage so it’s really quite interesting. It’s conceptual more than narrative-driven piece and it’s very dynamic, it’s epic, it’s huge.”
Lewis hopes that through the show he can offer a brief moment of pause from the pressure everyone’s going through at the moment. “It’s my first work back in Brisbane after five years in Melbourne and I’m really happy to be back and just exploring it, and also at a time where there are so many issues with government which is forcing a lot of social change and arts reform. I think this show, and the company Metamorphis Theatre Co., are all about creating art out of times of challenge and adversity so this is our response to what’s happening up here at the moment.”
‘Return’ runs from Friday July 13 to Saturday July 14 at The Judith Wright Centre.
Inspired by the annual Alice Springs Beanie Festival, ‘Head Full Of Love’ is the story of a white woman and an indigenous woman, played by Colette Mann and Roxanne McDonald.
“It’s a play about reconciliation, two women and how they meet, how they have great differences but eventually how they find that they’re really just the same person,” Mann says.
They meet on a bench in Alice Springs and realise that despite their differences in language, surroundings and upbringing they aren’t so different underneath it all. “I play a woman who comes from Sydney and she’s running away,” Mann says. “She’s running away from her life in Sydney and she’s a bit broken mentally and Tilly, the other character, is a bit broken physically and they both have family problems that they’re dealing with. This woman finds herself in the middle of Australia and doesn’t actually know why she’s there or why she went there in the first place and is just trying to find her way through the rest of her life.”
“Tilly is physically ill, she has kidney disease and she’s going through dialysis,” McDonald says. “She’s a sick woman, I mean sick physically, so she’s having to deal with a lot of cultural family things which she tells Colette’s character. There’s lots of talking about family, talking about life and struggles, all those things.”
As the two women crochet their beanies, they develop a relationship based on shared secrets, struggles and successes. “I think the main message is that people sometimes have preconceived ideas about a culture, especially with regards to kidney disease and aboriginal people. There are these misconceptions about how it must be because they’re all alcoholics and that’s why they get this disease when in actual fact it’s not, it’s due to a lot of other things,” McDonald says.
They’ve previously opened the show in Darwin for the Darwin Festival and it was well received by the community. “A lot of the community people came out and there was excitement around the production, lots of beanie making and people coming in from around Darwin. I’m really enjoying this second run of the play, we’ve done the piece before so I feel like we’re finding our characters more and it’s sitting in our bodies better. I’m feeling more confident with it,” says McDonald.
Written by Alana Valentine, the play shows that people need to look beneath the surface, not judge a book by its cover and that we’re all the same underneath no matter what colour our skin is. “It’s a beautifully written play by Alana. It’s something different ... it’s actually got a message,” Mann says.
“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn something and hopefully people will recognise something in the characters. Then also see that even though we have differences culturally, we are very similar as human beings and as women. I think everyone will relate to a lot of things in the production,” McDonald says.
‘Head Full Of Love’ runs July 7 to August 11 at the Cremorne Theatre QPAC.