Above: (l to r) Cast members Suz Mawer playing Centre and Lana Monk as Wing Attack warm up for their community netball game and for life during Emilie Colyer’s new play, ‘Contest’. All photos above and below by Phil Erbacher.
If possessing a powerful script that is then effectively, expressively developed were a competitive sport, then Contest– Emilie Colyer’s new play premiering at Flight Path Theatre would have a mantel of medals and trophies.
Set entirely on a netball court, this piece passes details of the lives of five women in front of us at lightning, interlocked speed. In our busy life and evident during the gradual, fragmented exposition of background during this play, there are many reasons people leave the game of life to find time out to play community sport. The unrushed, atypical narrative swoop which constantly shifts position on this independent theatre stage dazzles and moves us.
And it is a tough game we see the cast play on through. We crave the traditional thirst and emotion-quenching oranges well before half way through this clever play.
Exposition is in rewarding slow-mo, with fragmented flow between the contrasted and separate trajectories of the very different bibbed players before us. Whether in defence or attack mode, the team of actors here shoot a string of goals, keeping the bristling script buoyant.
Topics such as eating disorders, disability, ageing relatives, domestic violence and mental illness are amongst those alluded to in this game prep and match flow.
Kirsty Semaan (who brought us the touching tale of romance and domesticity in the 2025 production Two Hearts) shows us that as a director she is just as nuanced and clear when directed a team of issues, predicaments and stories as she did with the two romantic leads in the play last year.
The many intersecting lines, formations, hearts and heads on Colyer’s netball court. Discomfort, dread, disregard for sensitivity and distraction are feelings that are finely tuned across the diverse faces, friendships and fleeting, stiff upper lip flicking of the increasingly heavy ball during this expertly paced event.
The physicality relating to sport and any type of endurance is effectively captured buy director, lighting designer and tight kaleidoscope of the ensemble. This is a triumph of poetry and communication, with a stunning script that passes us dizzyingly across court and from one concern to the problematic other.
The shifts between individual storytelling, reaction to the state of play from each performer, and sharply contrasted personality types betraying the qualities of each stragetic netball bib plus a kit bag of unspoken challenges and hurts for each also.
The momentum of this nicely crafted work and this strong production in its sporty, stereotyped and stretch of a show (75 minutes sans interval. saw it fly past for me.
This compelling work on the competitive unravelling of several of life’s outlooks or perspectives brings us the strengths and weaknesses of players from this historically female sport. It redefines fitness, being game-ready, the pressure of game-on time and companionship in forced community with chilling as well as heartwarming results.
Flashbacks, replays, freeze frames, movement from pre-game huddles, through heartfelt chat to silent movement is commendable here. The documenting of false or uneven friendships, pressures of coping when exhausted,passing it forward, seeking help to push through and new concepts of winning, losing, being injured plus learning stranger new skills are all found in this incisive team’s training and clever theatrical kit bag.
The challenge so well conquered by this cast is that the play’s energetic shifts in pace, realities, memory and interaction styles still clearly show us life for the individuals and the team as a whole.
The game of life we follow here is definitely about whether you are winning or desperately losing. And that how you play the game or are made to play may not matter at full, half or mosty of the time.
See this play! It comes with uniform tributes to the power of independent theatre, women in and out of sport and to a refreshed rulebook on how to write successfully for an intimate theatre space.
Contest plays at Flight Path Theatre, Addison Rd Marrickville until March 28. Tickets: Available at www.flightpaththeatre.org
Cast team:
GS: Melissa Jones
GA: Willa King
C: Suz Mawer
GD: Emma Monk
WA: Lana Morgan
