Chantelle Jamieson and Lauren Anderson. Photo: Clare Hawley
What a week to open a play that questions women’s place in sport. Just as the photo that showcases AFL footballer Tayla Harris’s wonderful athleticism made headlines and created controversy, Jane E Thompson’s play provokes discussion and highlights the difficulties women face in the world of sport, traditionally a world predominantly run by men.
The premise of the work is that Suzie Flack, a talented athlete since her childhood, joins a men’s AFL team. Flack doesn’t want to be part of the AFLW, she wants to play in the male league – because she knows she is good enough – and in Fierce she does just that. It’s an imaginative leap and we’re talking fiction here of course, but Thompson wants us to think about women’s representation in sport, and what obstacles they have to overcome to be taken half-seriously.
Lauren Anderson. Photo: Clare Hawley
The small Fitzroy space, dark and smelling of camphor and menthol, opens with Flack (Lauren Richardson) working out with a punchbag (set design, Melanie Liertz). We don’t need words to tell us this woman is fierce, determined and strong – just like Richardson’s performance throughout this 90-minute work.
We quickly learn that Flack’s dad Ray was an AFL player and that the guy who runs the gym, Corey Anderson, is also a veteran player and something of a talent scout. Despite initial misgivings, Anderson gets Flack the in she needs to join a premier team, the mythical Falcons. Ball up. Fierce is up and running. And Suzie Flack is on her own, fighting to win against all the odds.
What follows is a series of well constructed scenes that just about hang together as a continuous work. Thompson has a lot to say (and why shouldn’t she have, given the attitudes that prevail, and not just in sport?)
Flack doesn’t want to be given any slack, she wants to be one of the boys (my expression, not Thompson’s, but what are the connotations for a boy wanting to be ‘one of the girls’? Just asking). So the first hazard is her physical form compared to that of heavier, more muscular males, and what are her advantages in terms of speed and dexterity? Then there’s the locker room talk, explicit and sexual. How does she deal with that? After all, it’s just boy talk, indulged in everywhere from US presidents down, right?
Lauren Anderson and Felix Johnson. Photo: Clare Hawley
A female journalist asks her all the cliched questions; Flack doesn’t want to play that game.
Then how does a female player relate to the WAGs (the wives and girlfriends)? Chantelle Jamieson steps in here as Melanie Arrowsmith, wife of one of Flack’s star teammates, and looking just like the arm candy that is presented at the Brownlows. Jamieson is very good, allowing the vulnerability of her character’s lonely life to show under the glitz and non-stop chatter that she feels is expected of her. Once again, Flack, the determined athlete, doesn’t fit in; she’s on the outer. She’s not at ease with Melanie’s husband either, as we see in an excruciatingly funny/awkward scene with Melanie’s husband Vance (Andrew Shaw).
What gets Flack out onto the field? Why is she driven to do this? Such questions and many more inform Thompson’s narrative. She’s interested in behaviours, and what shapes those behaviours and where are they learned – from parents, school, the news, society at large?
There’s a lot to like about Fierce, as well as the questions posed. It’s an unashamedly feminist work, powerful and direct, and laced with some fine humour, some of it light and some not – there is a wonderfully dark parody of The Footy Show, for example.
Flack hires an escort. Would anyone raise an eyebrow if one of the blokes did this?
Veering well away from humour is a sobering scene when all the vicious hate mail Flack receives for daring to compete, for doing her job and having a counter view is projected all over the set, writ large in black and white. If only that behaviour was unbelievable.
There are sterling performances throughout – notably from Richardson, and Martin Jacobs as Anderson and Ray Flack – but everyone in the ensemble (Zelman Cressey-Gladwin, Stacey Duckworth, Shaw, Jamieson and Felix Johnson) is tight, and also terrific in cameo roles. Ben Pierpoint’s composition and sound design and Kelsey Lee’s lighting design are integral to the moods of the work and the whole is directed by Janine Watson.
You don’t have to know anything about the AFL. Fierce is about trailblazing and breaking down barriers, not just about one sporting code.
Fierce, from Red Line Productions, plays at The Old Fitz, Woolloomooloo until April 13.
