A new eco-justice, applied theatre work in development is offering flood affected residents of Rocklea the opportunity to continue their recovery and reconnection through a project that will culminate in a community theatre event in mid 2024.
Griffith University’s Dr Linda Hassall is the project leader and she is interested in how theatre responds to climate emergency and climate change.
Dr Hassall’s home in the Brisbane suburb of Rocklea was flooded in the 2022 floods and in the 2011 floods. She is driven by a desire to help members of her community reconnect after the most recent floods.
“I’m really interested in how theatre can lead the way culturally in addressing sort of some of our sustainability issues, but I’m also really interested in how communities bounce back after climate emergency, particularly in experiences of resilience and recovery,” she said.
“How we can use theatre or applied theatre research forms to actually address that and create performance that actually encourages connection and community spirit,” she said.
Dr Hassall is collaborating with colleagues, artists and the Rocklea community on a project designed to bring the Rocklea community together to reconnect, respond and react to what they experienced during flood events particularly the 2022 floods which seriously affected the suburb. The project will culminate with a community event in mid 2024.
She said that while some positives such as the property buy back scheme had helped some residents, there were also people who continued to live in a community that still looked like a disaster zone 12 months on from the 2022 floods.
“When you think about that, houses are gutted, there’s just frames of houses standing up around the community, it’s actually a little depressing driving around the community and around the neighbourhood,” she said.
“The flood project is about bringing people together; community spirit allowing them to tell their stories. The applied theatre research framework is not talking for people but allowing them to talk with us to tell their stories their way.”
Dr Hassall said that while the initial response to the floods in Rocklea was helpful, when interest in the area died down some community members had experienced intense isolation.
“The idea of the flood project is to bring people together because you speak to anyone in this community they’re still reeling. They’re still dealing with insurance companies. They’re still fighting with insurance companies. They’re still dealing with trying to fix their homes or they’re trying to negotiate prices with the Council for buybacks. It’s an ongoing process. And you know, a lot of people do have PTSD in the neighbourhood because it was so horrifically deep, the water,” she said.
Dr Hassall said the event in proposed for mid-2024 would be as sustainable as possible and the project team is working with specialists to ensure minimal impact on the event location.
Dr Hassall and her colleagues are now liaising with Rocklea community members. Rocklea residents who were affected by the floods will have the chance to tell their stories or to have a performer share it on their behalf.
“I want the Community to be able to benefit by reconnecting and realizing just how resilient they are. I think that’s really important. I would like to also create a framework for this sort of work that may be utilised in similar projects. We can share that framework. We can go to an artist for example in a bush fire affected community and share the framework we used for this project. Perhaps it might be useful in bringing your community back together in your area, so that would be a research outcome rather than a creative output,” she said.
You can contact Dr Hassall at l.hassall@griffith.edu.au and see some of her research here:
The Embodying Hope and Recovery (with University of Melbourne) examined the role of youth theatre and performance in responding to the multifaceted effects of climate change and eco-anxiety, and to experiences of trauma and loss within disaster affected communities.
https://research.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/377550/Woodland-CAWRIFinalReport.pdf
The link below is to ongoing research involving a collaboration between circus artists and scholars.
