Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant is accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua recognise, in Chan's confused signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different cultural notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity.
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Summary
Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant is accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua recognise, in Chan's confused signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different cultural notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity.
Description
Songket: What happens when one person's culture is another's crime?Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant, is accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua interpret, in Chan's signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different cultural notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity.This Territory was developed in the wake of the 2005 Cronulla riots through a six-month research and consultation process with young people across Sydney. The play centres on a violent incident witnessed by a large group of young people, but they disagree about its details and their significance. In trying to get the story straight, the characters start to navigate relationships across the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, education and prejudice. They are Australia—a hotbed of cultures, and they are on fire.
About the Author
Noëlle Janaczewska is a playwright, poet, essayist, and the author of The Book of Thistles (UWA Publishing, 2017). Much of her work deals with history's gaps and silences, focusing on people, plants, creatures and events which have been overlooked or marginalised in official records. Noëlle's work has been produced, broadcast and published locally and internationally, and in 2014 she received a prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale for her body of work as a dramatist. In Australia her plays and audio scripts have won a Queensland Premier's Literary Award, the Playbox-Asialink Playwriting Competition, the Griffin Award and nine AWGIE Awards. Noëlle also presents performance essays—a term she coined to describe a hybrid which mashes the essay and the monologue with a range of other sources and genres. Blasted Island—Nauru's backstory was part of the Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and in 2015 Noëlle presented Dear Scott— her collected letters to the then Minister for Immigration. Recent productions include Seoul City Sue for ABC Radio National and the Children's Audio Tour for the National Museum of Australia and the British Museum's Rome: City and Empire exhibition, both in 2018.
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