Asylum

2005 Wal Cherry Play of the Year
2007 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Shortlist
2008 VCE Drama Playlist Selection

Director Jane Woollard
Written by: Kit Lazaroo
Designer Amanda Johnson
Composer Peter Farnan
Lighting Designer Richard Vabre
Performers Glynis Angell, Tom Considine,
Fanny Hanusin, Tim Stitz

Synopsis: Lally Black is a psychiatrist worried she lacks the compassion for her job. Her efforts double when Yu Siying enters her office, deftly searching for a way in to Lally’s heart. It is 1993 and the four year protection visa bestowed upon Chinese students by the Australian government is soon to expire. Siying is a Chinese woman who has caught HIV in Australia. Afraid of China’s judgment, Siying has one last chance to claim asylum, and believes Lally is the key to her appeal. Siying’s intrusion opens the way for apparitions to infiltrate Lally’s porous inner world: the sinister Mr Dando of Immigration, and Siying’s beleaguered family in China, complete with spies. Lally’s reclusive brother Smudge is mesmerized and galvanized by Siying, opening more rifts in Lally’s world. Lally becomes enmeshed by an imagined China unfolding between herself and Siying, laying bare the threads that run between complacency and brutality.