The Bougainville Photoplay Project

$19.99

Writer, academic and performer Paul Dwyer retraces three journeys made by his father, Dr Allan Dwyer, a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon, who visited Bougainville during the 1960s, healing dozens of crippled children. Family stories become entwined with the larger narrative of Australia’s colonial enterprise in the years following: the opening of the giant Panguna copper mine, environmental devastation and Bougainvillean resistance, a war that cost the lives of up to 20,000 people. Since 2004, Paul Dwyer has been making his own journeys to Bougainville, conducting research on the post-war reconciliation process and following the impact of those encounters between his father and the Bougainvillean children. This is politics and performance at its most personal.

"The way Dwyer has shaped this experience into a work for the stage is hugely impressive. A combo of boy’s own adventure, academic research, political act and theatre-making experiment." - Jameswaites.com

APT