Reviewd by Sarah Stephen
CMI — A Certain Maritime Incident
Devised by version 1.0 and the Department of Performance Studies, Sydney University
Performance Space, 199 Cleveland St Redfern
Until April 11
CMI is very impressive theatre — a thoroughly absorbing and fast-paced performance that delves into the farce and outrage of the federal Coalition government's attempt to cover up its 2001 pre-election lies that asylum seekers threw their children overboard.
The play's promotional material states: "CMI is a public act of outrage, a staging of outrageous acts, a guided tour along the treacherous border separating cool heads from icy cold outrage. CMI is heartbreaking and hilarious, a horribly funny tragedy."
You could be forgiven for thinking that the veiled and non-specific title of the play — A Certain Maritime Incident — was devised by the performers, but it was in fact the official name given to the Senate committee which investigated the "children overboard" cover-up.
You might wonder how a piece of theatre whose script is derived almost entirely from excerpts from the 2200 pages of testimony made before the inquiry could possibly be dynamic and engaging, but it is just that — thanks to the clever scripting, attention to detail and some witty, polished performances.
CMI draws its audience back to October 2001, a month after Tampa and a few weeks before the federal election. It takes you into the Senate committee room. The performers take the roles of six senators and a number of Navy personnel.
There are lots of laughs throughout the play, but the humour doesn't at any stage make light of the horror of the events that took place at the end of 2001.
CMI recounts how the committee embarked on an unexpected area of inquiry after the sinking of SIEV-X (suspected illegal entry vessel — unknown) on its way to Australia on October 19. Former diplomat Tony Kevin presented a hypothesis that the Navy was deliberately not informed about SIEV-X by those who knew it was on its way and in a very poor state.
As the senators pack up at the end of the inquiry, the audience hears the harrowing testimony of some of the survivors of SIEV-X, as they recount their struggle to stay alive after the boat went down, watching their children drown in the raging water around them. It is a symbolic reminder that the Senate inquiry did not reach a conclusion on what the Australian government knew about SIEV-X before it sank, and why nothing was done to try to rescue those on board.
In his own review of the play, Kevin remarked: "Dramaturg Paul Dwyer and the version 1.0 team have brilliantly gone where most writers about Australian politics do not yet dare to go — deep into the treacherous drowning waters of Australia's Operation Relex. The real CMI was about far more than just the investigation of falsified photographs of a sea rescue. Finally, the audience is left in no doubt about what the real Certain Maritime Incident was in October 2001 — it was the, still unsolved, sinking of SIEV-X."
At the end of the performance, a woman sitting in the audience behind me turned to her friend and whispered: "We killed them. We could have gone and rescued them, and we didn't." This summed up the power of the CMI performance — it was a piece of moving, educative theatre.
From Green Left Weekly, April 7, 2004.
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