Julian Assange was a skilled hacker by the time he was sixteen years old. He used the handle “Mendax” – which he took from the Latin phrase splendide mendax, which means “nobly untruthful”. But if Assange wears the badge of untruthful, it’s only because he uses hacktivism to expose lies and to encourage others to speak out.
Patricia
Cornelius’ latest play, Truth, which opened at the Malthouse this week, focuses
on the fringes of society, the powerless and the voiceless, for which her work
is well known. The fact that she centres someone known the world over is a marked
difference from earlier works like Shit and Slut and Do No Go Gentle…
but the driving rhythmic language of this new work is classic Cornelius.
Five actors
appear on stage. It’s the 1980s and they are all Julian Assange and also the
hacking club that Assange assembles in Melbourne. Back then, being a nerd or a
freak wasn’t something kids wore as a badge of honour. But not all nerds had
the keyboard skills of this group, a very specific skillset that emerged after
the rise of home computing.
Truth covers Assange’s life story from
there through the founding of Wikileaks, the numerous run-ins with the law and
international governments, his threat of arrest, his time in the Ecuadorian
Embassy in London and his years in Belmarsh prison. It also, not surprisingly
for a writer like Cornelius, detours into the accusations of rape that hung
over him in Sweden.
For all his
supposed nobility in exposing the crimes of the powerful all across the globe,
his reputation was at stake when it looked like he was trying to brush off two
women’s stories of assault. Were they trying to smear his name? Were these
women being used as pawns to have him handed over to the American authorities, a
country that called Wikileaks a danger to national security?
The play
ultimately doesn’t make a judgement on that incident, but it does expose another
instance of an imbalance of power – what the women actually wanted was ignored.
Much of
Cornelius’ new work – directed by long-time collaborator, Susie Dee – paints a
portrait of the world on the brink of a new day, the scales lifted from our
eyes, an examination of a time when we may not have been able to rely on
governments, but we could find relief in investigative journalism and strength
from whistleblowers the world over.
If Assange
stands at the centre, the stories of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are
also wound into the over-arching story about purveyors of truth who have risked
their lives and imprisonment to show us how the world really works.
The team of
actors assembled for this show is extraordinary. Cornelius’ words tumble out like
poetry, bouncing around the space like the chant of a protest, echoing through
the space and shouted directly at the audience. A true ensemble that supports
and guides each other and us through the minefields, both metaphoric and
literal.
Eva Rees is
impressive when she embodies Chelsea Manning, as the object of scrutiny and
finding strength in the most demoralising circumstances. But when telling the story
of a family and their close relationship with a paedophile priest, she moves us
in a moment of stillness and real quiet. Quiet, but not silence.
Tomáš Kantor is striking in his moments as Assange but he also gives Edward Snowden equal dimension in a scene with a blanket and a Rubix cube. And when Emily Havea is alone on stage dealing with a controlling boyfriend and his hidden cameras and airtags on her car – another kind of surveillance – we are devastated with her.
All this
plays out against Matilda Woodroofe’s imposing set; a chain-link fencing that reaches
up to platform overlooking the stage and the audience. She dresses the cast in
daggy 80s suits to begin with, but the quick changes are nimble and there’s fun
to be had with the outsiders in their band t-shirts. Meri Blazevski’s video design is arresting – a mix of heavy bold text, images of the cast from
discreet cameras placed all over the space, and most disturbingly, video from
the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” release.
Director
Susie Dee brings Cornelius’ fiery text to vivid, heart-pounding life. The
choreographed shuffling of desks. The five figures taking up space and
projecting their rage out into the audience. And the remarkable quiet moments
that are fleeting but sharp in her judicious use of them.
Exposing
the truth of systemic abuse across the world has been more mainstream recently.
There’s a genocide happening in Gaza and we only really know about the ongoing
atrocity through independent journalism and locals sending their messages out
into the digital world. Protests across college campuses in America. Weekly
protests in our capital cities here.
And now,
with the return of Trump and the installation of his unelected offsider, Elon
Musk, speaking out has become more vital than ever. Absolute power, as it
always has, corrupts absolutely. The story of Assange is so vital to tell now,
even if we are two decades away from the early days of Wikileaks, when some mainstream
media did the important work of analysing the data and reporting on it.
Truth in
2025 is more slippery and porous than ever before. Artifical intelligence and
deepfakes mean we don’t even know if what we are looking at is real anymore.
The Murdoch empire continues to strangle news coverage in America and Australia
and the United Kingdom. We need people on the inside to find
the courage to expose the lies of people in power. Truth honours those
who have come before and is a plea to never be silent on the important issues. All
of them.
But it – the show, the world, the truth of it – also feels overwhelming. Sometimes I come out of a show emotionally shattered, but there’s a catharsis that makes some kind of sense. Truth is an unvarnished look at several decades of the risks of publishing when the powerful want to keep things hidden.
At moments, it felt like a call to arms. When I walked out, I felt numb. I’ll be reckoning with these two feelings for a while.
But it’s good to be reminded that there
are truth-seekers out there, because these days, it’s easy to forget.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Truth runs at the Malthouse until March 8
Photos: Pia Johnson
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