BRUTALITY AND BROKENNESS

Ben Noble’s award-winning play Member pulls back the  veil on Sydney’s 1980s-era gang murders targeting
gays

By Andrew “Boots” Hardy

A hard-hitting story always hits harder when the tale being told is based on true events. Especially when the truth of those events has been deliberately obscured. 

Sydney, Australia, is a city on the world’s stage, perhaps best-known for its gorgeous beaches, towering bridges, and the renowned Sydney Opera House. It is a city celebrated today for its tolerance, a peer of San Francisco.

“A Queer mecca,” actor/playwright Ben Noble calls it. “A place to feel safe and get lost.”

But Noble exposes a stark and chilling chapter of hate and homophobia in the grand city’s not-so-distant past with his critically acclaimed one-man play, Member, making its U.S. debut at the San Francisco International Arts Festival this year.

HISTORY
In the late 1980s, the streets of Sydney were at the height of a three-decade wave of shocking violence targeting Queer people. Organized gangs of killers—some as young as 10 and 11 years old—were hunting gays, staking out their clubs and beats, stalking them in the night. Among the more horrific attacks were instances in which gays were either thrown or “herded” off the cliffs of Marks Park.

In addition to scores of brutal beatings and a number of disappearances, nearly 90 gay people were killed, with another 30 murders remaining unresolved to this day.

Police in those days wrote the murders off to suicide or random violence, refusing to acknowledge the existence of a coordinated crusade against homosexuals. With the express disinterest of the authorities, these gangs were allowed to go on ambushing and killing Queer people with impunity for decades. The victims were viewed as non-grievable throw-aways, and their deaths stirred no sympathy in mainstream (heterosexual) society.

HIS STORY
In 2013, while reading about Russia’s newest anti-LGBTQ legislation, Ben Noble stumbled across old news articles of some of the Sydney victims; he was taken aback that neither he nor his contemporaries in the Queer community had ever even heard of these atrocities.

Noble is the founder of Fairly Lucid Productions (FLP), an independent theatre company from Melbourne, Australia that celebrated their 20th birthday last year. FLP’s purpose is to provoke audiences to observe, think and discuss: this is their mission in a nutshell, and it’s one that Noble is especially suited to. His ability to push boundaries and inspire deep reflection in his audiences has won him praise and accolades far and wide.

As an experienced writer, the more he delved into the history of these murders, the more he was driven to tell the story, to expose this hidden history of hate—but with an audacious twist: The story gives voice not to the victim, nor to the survivor, but to the perpetrator himself, years after.

Corey, the fictional main character, was once a child under the spell of one of Sydney’s brutal gangs, incited at the age of 12 to inflict unspeakable violence against gays. He is now middle-aged with a loving wife, a son, a fresh promotion at work… Despite the deeply buried secrets of his past, Corey’s life has evidently been without regret.

But now the cracks are beginning to show—and widen.

The play opens on Corey, perched beside his son’s hospital bed after the young man suffers a savage gay-bashing at the hands of criminals who might as well have been Corey’s own spiritual descendants.

Corey’s son is gay.

With an all-Queer cast of collaborators, Noble’s one-man performance weaves a path through past and present, with more than a dozen individual interpretations combining into one seamless, intense theater experience that will leave the audience in a state of shock, driven perhaps to look within and examine their own unconscious biases. 

“It does kind of sucker-punch you,” he warns. “It’s relentless, because I felt like it needed to be controversial…

“But It’s not written specifically for a Queer audience,” he clarified. “It was written more for the general public; it holds a mirror up to them, to [help them] see that what you teach your children perpetuates behaviors. You may not have known that this stuff existed, but you need to know that it did—and that it still does.”

Noble hits the nail on the head. In fact, anti-LGBTQ+ hate is on the rise, at least here at home. Last September, the FBI’s annual report on hate crimes showed an ongoing spike in year-over-year attacks on the Queer community, including a 16% increase in attacks based on gender identity, and a 23% increase based on sexual orientation.

“The world feels increasingly hostile toward Queer people,” agrees Member’s director, David Wood, in a statement written for the play’s programme. “Hate crimes are rising, rights are being erased and people’s very existence has become the source of debate… A play about the violent past suddenly feels very present.”

“I wrote this play as a way of healing something in myself,” Noble admitted. Coming from a small town, he was forced to remain closeted much of his life for fear of violence. “It took me a while to realize that was why I was writing it.”

“The story Ben has crafted,” said Wood, “like the ocean it dwells on, is both beautiful and terrifying. It asks us not to look away. It asks us to look back. And maybe, in order to move forward, we must look back.”

But Noble has endeavored to make no demands of the audience. Perhaps the greatest gift he has given with this performance is the freedom of the audience to decipher its meaning on their own.

Certainly, Corey has committed unspeakable evil against unsuspecting, innocent Queer people. But the man himself—is he inherently evil because of the evil he has committed? As he sits at the bedside of his Queer son, does he experience any remorse for the destruction he left in his wake?

“I certainly have my own opinion,” Noble promises. “But I don’t like to dictate to an audience… And so you just portray the truth of it. And the truth is complex.”

Just so.

In addition to this profound and powerful performance, SFIAF will be hosting an LGBTQ+ Artist Panel Discussion on the evening of Wednesday, May 7 at 6:00pm. Ben Noble will be among several international artists coming together to lead a conversation on the fluctuations in LGBTQ+ civil rights amid the ebb and flow of national and geo-politics, the re-emergence of Fascism and its embedding in the religious right. Moderated by Evan Johnson from Ruth’s Table.

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PLEASE NOTE: This production contains distressing or potentially triggering themes, depictions of violence, and strong language.