Perth Voice Interactive

WINDY Perth is a city at the mercy of the changing winds of the mining industry, so a play about a red dust storm completely blanketing the metropolitan area has resonance.

The inspiration for Dust was the 2009 dust storm that closed Sydney, but the content is pure Western Australia—and its mining culture.

Living in the shadow of the mining industry we are vulnerable to boom and bust, and keenly aware of the impact on the environment, playwright  Suzie Miller says.

“I wanted to take a day when everything is different—indeed, a day where a huge dust storm has taken what we dig up and covered the city of Perth in it.”

A portent of an apocalypse, a disaster or just a freak weather episode?

“In any event the strangeness and uncertainty can stop us in our tracks and force us to look inward and examine what we have long buried,” Miller says.

“This strange event might just bring people up close and personal to families, lovers, death, life, vulnerability and strength.”

Interestingly the play was commissioned by mining giant Rio Tinto, a strong supporter of Black Swan Theatre, although the subject was entirely Miller’s.

One of two characters that Fremantle actor Gemma Willing plays (she is both Lara and Sophie) is stranded in a one-night stand as people are told to stay inside, amid fear the dust is toxic.

Instead of a quick exit Lara and her “date” are forced to spend time with each other and look at where their lives are going.

“It changes the way we look at ourselves and our place in the world,” Willing says, adding, “there’s a lot of humour in it.”

Other characters include a FIFO worker stuck at the airport, a vulnerable teen and a bride-to-be watching her dreams of a white wedding fall apart in red grit. “This is the story of looking beyond the top soil and digging deeply into lives that could be the lives of any of us,” Miller says.

The playwright’s research included witness accounts of the Sydney storm.

“It did feel like Armageddon, because when I was in the kitchen looking out of the skylight, there was this red, red glow coming through,” a Dulwich Hill resident said at the time.

“The city looked like Mars,” another said.

“I went out for a ride on my bicycle and I ended up looking like a red panda,” was another.

Dust, which also stars Kelton Pell, the magnificent Odin in the ABC’s The Gods of Wheat Street, is on at the State Theatre from June 28 to July 13.

by JENNY D’ANGER