Parramatta Girls

Our May season is the award winning

 Parramatta Girls by Alana Valentine

director Siobhan O'Gara

“My name is Coral and I was here in the sixties. About 10 generations of girls was locked up in ‘ere. And after they spat us out we became the mothers and sisters and wives of Australia.”

Parramatta Girls is the story of those mothers, sisters and wives. This play is based on the testimony of dozens of old girls from the Girls Training School in Parramatta, New South Wales. The girls get together for a reunion 40 years after their release from the institution and tell their story. Parramatta Girls is sad; it is honest and it is humorous. We laugh with the girls and we cry with them. The story is uplifting as it shows how the girls triumphed over their sad past. The Parramatta Girls Home was closed in 1974. Its conditions were widely recognised as being harsher than those of adult prisons. Girls endured harsh, punitive conditions and were kept under constant surveillance. Sexual, emotional and psychological abuse was common-place. Valium and Largactil and solitary confinement were used to subdue difficult girls.

This will be the premier production of Parramatta Girls in Perth. The play was first produced by Company B at the Belvoir Street Theatre Sydney in 2007. Alana Valentine is an award winning writer based in New South Wales whose other plays include Swimming the Globe (1996); and Run Rabbit Run (2004). Siobhán O’Gara, director of Parramatta Girls also directed Necessary Targets for the Old Mill Theatre which attracted critical acclaim and a Best Director nomination.

We advise that this play contains adult themes and strong language and may not be suitable for children

Sunday May 20 is a Matinee at 2 pm