THE escalating Israeli violence in the Gaza Strip was the catalyst for the post-apocalyptic dance theatre work Conference on Hope at the Blue Room Theatre.

Back in 2023, writer Eliza Smith was overcome by the disturbing footage of war-torn Gaza circulating on social media.

It prompted a discussion with her friend and show co-creator Zendra Giraudo about what they were witnessing and how they should respond.

“Backlash and censorship within the arts industry only further compounded the questions we had around our own complicity and response-ability,” Smith says.

The conflict came in the wake of an emotional period for Smith.

“I had spent the past two years working as a nanny for two young children whose mother had been fighting terminal cancer and ultimately passed away in November 2023,” she says. 

“Witnessing death, grieving-with and care-giving was, for me, an act of labour in its most literal sense.”

Meanwhile, Giraudo was coming off the back of creating WHITESNAKE3000, which explored their identity as a Chinese-Malaysian-Australian queer artist.

All these themes and feelings bubbled away until co-creator Cameron Park came on board in 2025 and they formalised their ideas in Conference on Hope—a poignant blend of dance, imagery and spoken word.

“It’s an accumulative patchwork of personal, political and mythic stories which attempt to understand the scale of crises we are witnessing,” Smith says.

“We aren’t performing characters within this show; we are Zendra, Cameron and Eliza connecting with the live audience, in an attempt to bear witness to a world in crisis and find hope despite it.

“So I guess I perform the part of Eliza; a part-time artist who pays their bills through care-giving and grief, trying to learn how to watch someone die.” 

Smith studied Performing Arts (Performance Making) at WAAPA and has a background in theatre.

She wrote and directed Everything Flickers, and directed Lily Boss-Bailey’s Much Stuff for The Blue Room’s 2023 season, and in 2025 was co-creator and performer in Love Stories and Leg Business.

She wrote Conference on Hope, while Giraudo handled choreography, and Park was the designer. They all perform in the show.

“The process has been entirely collaborative, meaning that all three of us are shaping all elements of the work together,” Smith says.

“The tenuous yet ever-violent state of the world has shifted and changed since the beginnings of this work, but overarching themes of entangled colonial cannibalism and our attempts to bear witness to a world at stake have remained throughout.”

The show has “Hope” in the title. So with wars raging across the world, can we seek solace in art, and what is the way forward?

“I don’t think that we are going to dance our way out of this mess any time soon,” Smith says. 

“But I do know that in times of collapse and grief humans have always looked towards ritual, and live performance is one of the few rituals the western colonial world has left.

“I also think that live performance is such a rare and charged moment of unfiltered connection and perhaps above all else, we need each other.”

Conference on Hope is at the Blue Room Theatre, 53 James St, Northbridge from September 22 to October 10. Tix at blueroom.org.au.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK