A provocative new play about Julian Assange and the price of exposing power.
The latest work from Australia’s most celebrated playwright Patricia Cornelius, Truth, will make its highly anticipated world premiere at Malthouse from Thursday 13 February to Saturday 8 March. Directed by Cornelius’ long-time collaborator Susie Dee, this groundbreaking new play delves deep into the controversial figure of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in an examination of the precarious balance between truth and power.
The story starts in 1980s Melbourne as a group of teenage hackers infiltrate the Pentagon, Stanford, and NASA—not for personal gain, but out of sheer curiosity. What begins as youthful rebellion soon unravels into a profound exploration of truth, power, and the consequences of speaking out. Through a fictional lens, Truth brings to life the journeys of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden—three individuals who risked everything to expose the world’s secrets.
Patricia Cornelius is one of Australia’s most awarded and influential playwrights whose past work has included some of the country’s most powerful plays, from Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? and Do Not Go Gentle, to Shit. Renowned for her fierce commitment to social justice and her unflinching examination of power structures, she once again tackles themes that have been central to her four-decade-long career in Truth.
Together, Patricia and director Susie Dee (Savages, Animal, Caravan) have been electrifying Australian stages for years. Truth arrives almost forty years after the pair’s first collaboration in 1987’s Lilly and May. This production was shown in the incompletely renovated Sturt Street theatre in what was effectively the first Malthouse performance.
“It has been both terrifying and exhilarating to write a play that is about the fight for a better, more transparent and decent world. Truth, and how it has been denied us, truth and how many have suffered terribly for telling it, truth and how we are growing numb to it—what better material for a play?” – Patricia Cornelius.
Fusing real-life events with fictionalised commentary, Truth is an examination of one of Australia’s most divisive public figures. Over the course of the play, Assange is presented through five different actors; Emily Havea (Wentworth); Tomas Kantor (Twelfth Night); Eva Rees (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child); Eva Seymour (One Room Renovations); and James O’Connell (Sunday). Each will embody a distinct facet of Assange’s persona, delving into his early years as a teenage hacker in Melbourne, his founding of WikiLeaks, and his nearly 14 years of confinement—spanning prison, embassy asylum, and house arrest—whilst grappling with the complex and divisive sexual assault allegations made against him.
Drawing on these key moments from Assange’s life, Cornelius and Dee have crafted a work as much about the man himself as the price of speaking the truth, and consequences of staying silent. In bringing Truth to Australian audiences, they deliver a timely and powerful exploration of modern activism and a sharp political reflection on the cost of defiance.
February 13 – March 8
malthousetheatre.com.au
