AustLit

'In Darwin during WWI, ‘smoke social’ parties were staged to farewell enlisting soldiers. They featured Vaudeville routines, songs, poetry and brass bands. A Smoke Social, re-creates one of these parties, inviting audiences to participate as they did a hundred years ago in the original venue where these socials were staged – nowadays known as the ‘Town Hall Ruins’.

'A Smoke Social leaps ahead to the Palestinian front where two Darwin brothers – one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous – have been abandoned. One of the brothers falls in love with a Palestinian woman while the other despairs of ever being rescued. The play shifts seamlessly between Palestine and Darwin through the device of the ‘smoke social’ – the various routines and re-enactments reveal the brothers’ fate.

'Inspired by real events, A Smoke Social addresses global and ‘frontier’ wars, colonialism and brotherly love. In A Smoke Social, the political is always, and deeply, personal.'

Source: Brown's Mart Theatre.