Long Tan Receives Sensory Theatrical Staging

Stories from Australia’s most significant battle of the Vietnam War will be told in the world premiere staging of Long Tan, an aural and sensory theatre experience. 

Adelaide’s Brink Productions (Aspirations of Daise Morrow, When the Rain Stops Falling), in association with State Theatre Company of SA & Adelaide Festival Centre,will create this theatrical event from a semi-verbatim text by award-winning playwright Verity Laughton.

Composed from interviews with the surviving Australian soldiers, Vietnamese contributors and family and friends of those who died, Long Tan isn’t simply a work about a contentious time and iconic battle. Rather, it’s a meditation on the fractures in collective memory, the consequences of extreme demands on human beings in military conflict, and the need for forgiveness, empathy and faith in our common humanity.

Verity Laughton said: “In telling the story of D Company, 6RAR, and the battle of Long Tan on August 18th 1966, it’s not my purpose either to rake over old controversies or to tell a tale of battle and glory. My piece is about the psychology of this event, and its aftermath. The Vietnam War still polarizes people. But what some people even now find it hard to acknowledge is that the Australian soldiers by and large fought honourably in what became a controversial war. The soldiers we meet in this play were inside an event, the ferocity of which most of us will never come close to experiencing. Some of them have been living with the impact of it, and the social responses to it, for the rest of their days. Others paid with their lives. This play is an attempt at understanding – complexities, contradictions, warts and all – these long years after.”

The theatre production depicts The Battle of Long Tan - one of the most historic battles of the Vietnam War which took place on a hot, rain-sodden afternoon in 1966. In the glutinous mud of a rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, 105 Australian and three New Zealand soldiers clashed with approximately 2,500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops. In the ensuing battle, 18 Australians died (17 were killed in action and one died of wounds 9 days later) and more than 245 communist Vietnamese.

Long Tan brings together a cast of twelve South Australian actors in an immersive audio-theatre production that will parachute audiences into the soldiers’ experience – gunfire, mortar fire, pounding rain, insect clouds, screams and sudden silence – all orchestrated with sonic intensity to capture the pandemonium and entrapment under fire.

World Premiere

Directed by Chris Drummond

Cast: David Andri, Stuart Fong, Patrick Graham, Matthew Gregan, Antoine Jelk, Patrick Klavins, Nic Krieg, Guy O’Grady, Chris Pitman, Mémé Thorne, Elijah Valadian-Wilson and Taylor Wiese.

Composer & Sound Designer:  Luke Smiles

Designer: Wendy Todd

Lighting Designer: Chris Petridis

AV Exhibition: Malcolm McKinnon

Venue: Space Theatre

Season dates: 31 March - 08 April

Image: Antoine Jelk. Photographer: James Hartley