Dirt, the show which drew critical acclaim at this year’s Adelaide Fringe will be coming to Perth’s Fringe World in 2022.

This original queer political thriller won four awards at Adelaide Fringe and picked up  a dozen five-star reviews. Commissioned, produced and performed by real-life couple, Wil King and Patrick Livesey in response to LGBTQIA+ persecution in Russia, Dirt follows a Russian and an Australian over the course of a single night in Moscow but things take a dark turn when neither turn out to be who they say they are.

The production is the first time Livesey and King have shared the stage, having first met after an audition in 2017. That particular role went King’s way but love blossomed and three years later the pair found themselves living with King’s parents during last year’s lockdown.

Patrick Livesey shares that they came up with idea for the play while in lockdown in 2019.

“Wil and I found ourselves in lockdown in 2020, with a fair bit of time in our hands. We had this idea we’ve been talking about for a while this idea about dealing with what’s happening in Russia right now with their discrimination towards its queer citizens, and we were kind of thinking about how we could bring attention to it, because a lot of people we knew had no idea what was going on over there.

“It’s just it’s been escalating and getting worse and worse, and so we thought about maybe commissioning a friend of ours who’s a really amazing playwright, to write this play.

The couple admit though that they had some hesitation, and that too forms part of the final work.

“We had all these fears about, do we really understand the issue? Is this something we should be talking about? So, through a lot of development, we ended up making this play, which actually deals with those fears.

“So on the one hand, it’s talking about what’s happening over in Russia. On the other hand, it’s dealing with this question around, how do you engage with human rights issues? What’s the line between wanting to help, but also not wanting to centre yourself in that story?

For Wil King he really wanted to bring an issue that a big topic for people a few years ago back into the spotlight.

“As a community, we always seem to get this sort of just a bit of fatigue about human rights issues. Just with all of the drama that’s happening everywhere, we’re not very good at keeping in touch with specific issues when there are so many things going on.

“That’s sort of why we wanted to speak to this issue at this time and raise the money. One dollar from every ticket sold from the show goes towards Russian LGBT network, who worked to sort of improve conditions and champion equality for queer people in Russia.” King shared.

Dirt has new dates, it will play from 26th January to 5th February. Tickets are on sale now. 

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