TEAM OF LIFE

KAGE is developing a new performance work entitled TEAM OF LIFE, which uses sports metaphors that are powerfully resonant within Australian culture to illuminate stories of young culturally diverse people who have experienced hardship. Developed by writer/community worker David Denborough, the TEAM OF LIFE methodology is being used in Australia to respond to young people from refugee backgrounds and young people in rural, remote and urban Aboriginal communities. TEAM OF LIFE enables young people to come to terms with traumatic experience without speaking directly about it.

The TEAM OF LIFE production that will harnesses the power of two great dramatic traditions - sports and theatre.

By honouring the great Australian game (AFL), and the World game (soccer), TEAM OF LIFE will tell stories of young people’s search for different kinds of freedom.

Performed by professional dancers, actors and rising sports stars, and informed by workshops with young refugees and young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, this production will dissolve the boundaries between sport, theatre and identity.

When the final siren sounds, signaling the end of TEAM OF LIFE, the way you understand sports, theatre and even your own life, will no longer be quite the same.

This project is an innovative, effective and positive way to engage with distadvantaged, targeted communities, and aims to lesson discriminatory attitudes towards these communities while contributing to social inclusion and a celebration of diversity. The project will to contribute to the cultural expression of a contemporary social issue of significance and increasing relevance. It will be a high profile performance of meaning and identity and a celebration of survival.

The work as been in research and development for the past 2 years and are now gearing up for the world premiere performance of TEAM OF LIFE in October 2014.

Head to www.KAGE.com.au for full details and to buy tickets to the performance.

Funded by Melbourne (June 2014)