GrabbyGrabbyWantWant
It started with a news article about a busload of passengers who refused to give up their seats for a pregnant woman. GrabbyGrabbyWantWant is a devised physical theatre piece that uses dance, monologue, movement and song to explore the idea that Australians are wealthier and angrier than ever before.
Triple8Theatre is a new theatre company comprising Harry Tseng (co-devisor/performer) from Melbourne, Newcastle’s Letitia Sutherland (co-devisor/performer/ writer) and Melissa Lee Speyer (co-devisor/writer)
from Sydney. Members of the group have worked together before, but this production marks their first collaboration all together. GrabbyGrabbyWantWant started with a news article about a busload of passengers who refused to give up their seats for a pregnant woman.
The narrative is inspired by many factors of modern Australian life: the clash of the little Aussie Battler with the largesse of the mining boom; skyrocketing house prices; the rising Aussie dollar and the falling greenback; and verbatim snippets, such as conversations overheard on the bus and comments posted after news articles online.
“We found ourselves coming back again and again to the idea that Australians are developing this angry streak, this sense that we’re struggling, we’re getting ripped off, and we’re entitled to
more, even though financially, we’re doing pretty well compared to the rest of the world, and even compared to previous generations,” says Lee Speyer, “So we began to explore those themes
– through comedy. Because the three of us are pretty cheeky.”
“As a collective, we began with a strong common desire to tell contemporary Australian stories in a way
that would challenge us as well as our audiences,” says Sutherland, “We had very few resources
at our disposal, so it was about making provocative theatre with a ten-dollar budget, and coming up with creative solutions."
