THE West Australian desert is the stark backdrop for an innovative and slightly surreal play about the fallout from war and imperial aggression.
Written and directed by Evan Rickman, So It Comes To Dust started life as a 20-minute play penned in response to Russia invading Ukraine in 2022.
The script sat unused in a drawer until 2025, when Rickman began expanding the idea to include themes of cyclical imperial violence and how everyday folk perpetuate the destruction of those around them and eventually themselves.
“As I reworked ideas, I decided the show should follow a central story and characters displaced through different time periods to draw comparisons between our actions in historical conflicts and those of today,” Rickman says.
Wars are raging across the world, but most Australians have the luxury of a geographical barrier to shield themselves from the emotional and physical toll of conflict, fostering a “We’ll be okay” and “Nobody bothers with us” mentality.
Rickman says it’s a dangerous mindset.
“We find it hard to face the role Australia plays in international destruction and would like to believe we are too isolated to be attacked or affected by war and genocide despite the country being built on it,” he says.
“I hope to some extent So It Comes To Dust will encourage people to re-evaluate their actions (or lack thereof) in a world that convinces us silence and complicity in the face of violence is a form of self-preservation rather than a handover of power to the very people who force violence on us.”
An arresting mix of poetry and contemporary and traditional theatre, the play uses different mediums to explore the idea of society repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
“I believe blending theatre styles will help transport the audience through different spaces and times in a way a change in setting alone cannot,” he says.
“One scene uses Elizabethan language and conventions to draw comparisons between Shakespeare’s historical tragedies and the path we find ourselves journeying down today.”
Rickman wrote the poems for the play, which are delivered by two otherworldly beings in a twist on the traditional Greek chorus.
“They act as an outside eye and offer the audience insight into how the other characters act as a microcosm of modern Australia,” he says.
The play features an intergenerational cast and crew including current and former students from the drama department at John Curtin College of the Arts.
Rickman believes this blend of old and new is lacking in the theatre world and would like to see more of it in teaching and performance.
The Perth playwright graduated from the John Curtin College of the Arts in 2021 and, aged 19, wrote and directed his debut play Where Water Once Was, a psychological thriller performed at The Blue Room Theatre in 2023.
His next play The Belly was a creepy, political satire set inside a crooked town located entirely within the stomach of a dying giant whale.
A queer creative living with disability and neurodivergence, Rickman’s So It Comes To Dust is probably his most ambitious and poignant work to date: “The play explores what we inherit from previous generations, and what we leave for generations to come… if there are any left.”
So It Comes To Dust is at The Blue Room Theatre, Northbridge from July 28 to August 15. For tix and more details see blueroom.org.au.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK