Critical Responses

What did other people make of Bright World? Follow the links to read the reviews:

The Australian Stage praised the ‘honest, often confronting, insight’ into the creative process that the play affords, and appreciated that Elise and Andrea ‘dared to explore, in public, their personal memories and direct experiences, of prejudice, violence, dispossession and racism, with an honesty and humour that eventually brings them to an awkward understanding.’ The reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald felt the show wasn’t ‘as moving as it might be’, but that the show’s ‘unflinching struggle with the personal as political’ and ‘its fusion of whimsy and brutal honesty’, made it ‘a thought-provoking work with plenty of heart.’ The Arts Hub reviewer had some reservations about the performances, but loved the ‘scenes that zip along with tight, pacy dialogue…exhibiting nuanced reversals and suspense.’ On the other hand, the reviewer for Syn felt the ‘cast was very engaging and beautiful to watch, they all delivered powerful performances’, but that the intellectual treatment of some themes ‘left the emotional elements of the play having less impact.’ The reviewer for Stage Whispers was impressed at the way the play brought so many different stories together, calling it ‘an intricate and clever structural achievement’. He was concerned that some of the grimmer aspects of the histories explored might be downplayed, but ‘after the breakneck ride through two histories, the comic conflicts and jokes, the ending is suddenly still and quiet and moving.’

Background

Bright World brings together the historical experiences of playwrights Elise and Andrea’s relatives.

Andrea is related to William Cooper (1861-1941), an Indigenous rights activist who lived for most of his life on the Cummeragunja Reserve, before moving to Melbourne. You can find out more about the life of Cooper and his family, including his nephew Sir Doug Nicholls (1906-1988) in this documentary.

Elise never met her paternal grandparents, Hans and Alice Herskovic. But in the 1980s, her father recorded an interview with them about their escape from Austria in the run-up to the Second World War (1939-45), and some details of their story in Bright World are drawn from that.

A key moment when the oppression of Jewish and Aboriginal people intertwined was Kristallnacht. On 9-10 November 1938, Nazis and German citizens attacked Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship. Today it is seen as a key moment in events leading up to the Holocaust, where approximately 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Highly attuned to injustice and oppression because of his own experiences, on 6 December 1938 William Cooper led a delegation to the German Consulate in Melbourne to present a petition protesting against the persecution of the Jews. The petition was rejected by the Consulate. You can read more about Kristallnacht here and watch an interview with survivors here. On the 80th anniversary of the event, the ABC carried a story on Cooper’s protest, here.

You can see how the stories in Bright World come together, and how Bright World itself came together, in the following timelines.