SNAKEFACE

Jeffrey Khoo explores how Fruit Box Theatre’s production, SNAKEFACE, at Belvoir Street kickstarts a long-overdue conversation about the commodification of trauma.

Most indie playwrights would shy away from cramming live sculpting, poetry and visual projections into a queer retelling of Greek mythology. But for Aliyah Knight, their play SNAKEFACE - a sweeping story about romance, rage and revenge through the eyes of a queer Black woman in white Australia - is meant to be a rebellion against the expectations of what theatre can be.

As a writer, filmmaker and artist, Knight hasn’t ever confined themselves to a single modality. The Australian theatre industry notoriously forces artists to rely upon the whims of deep-pocketed patrons and risk-averse corporate funders, so Knight found it refreshing to use SNAKEFACE to interrogate “how we’re allowed to tell stories”. Alongside director Bernadette Fam, queer theatre producers Fruit Box Theatre and a powerhouse team of designers, Knight dove into an experimental, collaborative, messy process to realise their vision. “I really do feel held by everyone … All of those elements are very much alive characters themselves, and it’s been a really fun process of putting the layers together and messing things up.”

While ideating SNAKEFACE, Knight revisited the myth of Medusa, and started thinking from Medusa’s perspective. Here’s someone whose face was plastered across ancient Greek art and architecture to ward off evil spirits; Medusa’s appearance grants her immense power, but it also ostracises her and is weaponised by others.

The very core of the myth, where Medusa is cursed for the actions of Poseidon, has even taken on a new significance in some modern retellings. Establishing Medusa as having been sexually assaulted by Poseidon and unfairly seen as an aggressor when she should be recognised as a victim.

Knight draws parallels between this myth and contemporary culture, through the hypersexualisation and intense scrutiny of Black women’s bodies - and how the actions and bodies of queer Black women are particularly picked apart by the patriarchy for challenging societal structures. At some point, that feeling gets tiring.

“As Black women, [society thinks] we can’t be victims, and we have to have this inherent strength to survive through the world. Young girls are treated as though they are fully grown women,” Knight says. In part, the mythology is a way to give voice to legitimate feelings of rage, to explain “the towering weight of having this power and not knowing how to use it, when you’re trying to exist with the expectations of something way bigger than you on your shoulders.”

SNAKEFACE also kickstarts a long-overdue conversation about the commodification of trauma of minority groups. While some larger productions are valuably deconstructing race relations and championing non-white voices, mainstage theatre remains a white man’s world. Knight is alert to who has power, and consequently, the racial and gender dynamics behind who gets to tell stories about victimhood and how those stories are told.

“In the Australian arts landscape, there are so few stories that centre people of colour, especially queer people,” and their experiences of trauma are told “in this voyeuristic way that doesn’t allow for complex, fully-realised humans,” Knight says. People of colour are still treated, especially by larger, more commercial productions, as a spectacle through which white audiences can engage with traumatic subjects at a safe distance from the people they’re about. Even when a protagonist’s story ends well, they’re often depicted as a perfect minority, their story too neatly-told. In response, Knight wanted to depict a queer person of colour who can “exist fully in their emotions and their fuck-ups … this person who is all those things, who is victimised, who is angry, but who also has control.”

Knight, conscious that queer people of colour in media are too often defined by their trauma, envisions the protagonist as an artist (and has her sculpt live on stage), to explore the tension between creation and destruction. “There’s incredible power in her being a creator and separating artmaking from pain … I wanted to give things to her that were not simply about being turned into a monster.”

On their personal website, Knight describes themselves as “passionate about exploring messy, uncomfortable and uncharted experiences where the personal meet political through horror and humour.” Horror and humour, Knight argues, are just different ways to get to the same point. “They are in the same world of blowing up experiences and emotions as far as they’ll go … you get to take these sticky feelings that we normally keep to ourselves, and put it in front of audiences unavoidably.”

Knight “absolutely” wanted SNAKEFACE to do just that, jumping between moments of “genuine dark body horror” and unexpected moments of comedy and connection. It’s a bold goal, but not unexpected from someone as assured and boundary-pushing as Knight. “I hope people leave the space feeling shocked to their core, but simultaneously held in this strange way.”

SNAKEFACE is playing at Belvoir St Theatre from 8-27 April, 2025.