You don’t need to care about Aussie Rules to get a lot out of 37, a play that’ll take you right back to 2015, the year wildly successful AFL player Adam Goodes celebrated a goal with a cultural dance linked to his Indigenous identity. His miming of throwing a spear into the crowd sparked a horrific public campaign of vilification that ultimately led the star to quit the game, in silence and with two premierships and two Brownlows under his belt.
The ‘Goodes saga’, as the whole sorry tale has since become known, served as (yet another) reckoning on racism in so-called Australia, with Goodes going on to thrive as an activist far beyond the field.
Named for the number on Goodes’s iconic Sydney Swans guernsey, 37 is set not on the national stage of the AFL, but instead follows the Cutting Cove boys. The local team of this small coastal town has been stuck at the bottom of the ladder for too long and this season, they’re determined to scramble their way to the top.
The Marngrook cousins, named after the Indigenous game that inspired AFL, could be just what the team needs to get ahead, but how will the chips fall when Goodes’s war cry draws back the veil on tensions within the team and the nation at large?
With direction from Isaac Drandic (The Birthday Party, ABC’s Cleverman) and writing from two-time Tasmanian Aboriginal Artist of the Year Nathan Maynard, 37 returns to Melbourne Theatre Company’s Southbank Theatre from January 24. The play runs for 90 minutes with no interval and tickets are available here.
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