Image by Brett Boardman
★★★★ 1/2 The Sydney Morning Herald
★★★★ Limelight
★★★★ Time Out Sydney
★★★★ — Audrey Journal
“…intimate and epic, poignant and powerful. The play is an achievement of the first order.”
- Judges’ comments, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards
“…It runs for just short of an hour, but the credibility of the writing and intimacy of the production makes every minute matter; it shows us something painfully, perfectly, recognisably alive.”
- Cassie Tongue, The Sydney Morning Herald
“It is a passionate and deeply truthful piece of writing from Jamieson Brown.”
- Suzy Wrong, Time Out Sydney
Director & Dramaturg Declan Greene
Designer Emma White
Composer & Sound Designer David Bergman
With Joseph Althouse, Steve Le Marquand
Venue
Green Park
Preview 5 February
Opening Night 6 February
Season 9 February – 6 March
Performance Times
Tuesday – Saturday 7.15pm
You’ve walked past it. Maybe through it. Down the end of Victoria Street, opposite St Vincent’s Hospital—Green Park. It’s picturesque by day, a little eerie by night. And it’s where Warren and Edden are meeting, as a prelude to their Grindr hook up.
One of them doesn’t look like his photo. There’s an age gap between them (but what’s a decade or three?). And one is harbouring a dangerous secret. In an hour’s time, both will leave the park profoundly transformed.
Google Maps lists Green Park as “Good for Kids”. But just a few decades ago, that definitely wasn’t the case. For decades, the Wall opposite the park was where rent boys plied their trade for curb-crawling Johns. The public toilet was a spot for secret all-hours hook ups. When the cops dismantled it, in 1988, a cabal of drag queen nuns—the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—built a shrine to a chunk of its urinal. These details are becoming lost to time. But in Green Park, Warren and Edden will be pushed together—and apart—by forces of Sydney’s history that neither of them can comprehend.
In 2021, Griffin is leaving its home at the SBW Stables and wandering down the road to the real Green Park. Outside the rotunda, audience members will be outfitted with a set of headphones. And together, they will eavesdrop on playwright Elias Jamieson Brown’s finely wrought Darlinghurst noir. To everyone else, the two men talking on a bench might not look like much. But in the gloom of the setting sun, you’ll experience a dangerous psycho-sexual collision… in a very public place.
Awards and Recognition
Nominated for Best Mainstage Production at the Sydney Theatre Awards
Shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting.
Read the Sydney Morning Herald article by Steve Dow: ‘Dramatic Grindr encounter at a park adds chapter to Sydney’s gay history’
Green Park was developed and publicly presented at Melbourne Theatre Company’s Cybec Electric, 2019
Director John Kachoyan
Dramaturg Chris Mead
With Peter Houghton and Lachie Pringle
28 years ago Warren found a dead body in the Green Park toilets. Tonight, Warren waits in a shoebox apartment overlooking the ARQ nightclub, a stone’s throw from Green Park. He’s waiting for Edden, the dream boy he met online. Edden is 30 years younger than Warren, and very handsome – but he doesn’t look like the boy in his profile photo.
A story of sex and power across generations.