Art often reflects the world it is created in, and when the world got unfathomably devastating in the case of the Norway attacks of 2011, there was a reaction from a playwright; trying to find sense out of a senseless act.
Scottish playwright David Greig's award-winning 2013 play 'The Events' has been picked up by Adelaide's State Theatre Company, and is premiering the Australian production at the Adelaide Festival. The star of the show Catherine McClements, shares her thoughts on the original production and its subject matter. “Everyone heard about the Breivik case, we certainly did here in Australia. It made headline news. It was just an extraordinary thing to happen particularly in a country like Norway, which is not known for its incredible violence or massive gun deaths.
“It seemed inexplicable in some ways. The horror seemed out of the blue, and a country like Norway were reeling from the consequences of it. This play came from an English company and a Norwegian company coming together and collaborating on the story, which is based on that case, but is not specifically about it.”
'The Events' follows a community’s search for compassion, peace and understanding in the wake of unthinkable violence. When Claire (Catherine), a priest, survives a massacre she sets out on a quest to answer the most difficult question of all – ‘why?’ It’s a journey that takes her to the edge of reason, science, politics and faith. “The play is about coming together to contemplate the events and what we do about them. I think the play does raise the possibility that there is no real reason for things like this to happen, no matter how much we scour the newspaper to find out the background of the perpetrators. Whether they were this, or were terrible to animals as children, or whether their parents kept guns.“No matter how many facts we get, we are still left with this overwhelming anxiety and fear and it's an attempt to face that and to say 'we can't really solve them through knowing the individual facts'. It's not about that it's about something else that we need to come together and explore. There is no attempt to glorify this at all. It's not like the public media. It's more an attempt to celebrate the idea of community.”
The production will feature choral music, which Catherine believes will compliment the the acting on stage. “An individual act or a group of actors cannot give the sort of feelings and emotion that a choral group can give. So we are very lucky to have that as a part of the show itself. Every night there will be a different community choir that comes on stage and they sing their own music. They also sing songs that David has made for the play.”The actress reflects on why she feels it is right for her to star in this play, and echoed the earlier point about art reflecting a poignant moment in time, using her experience in the world of theatre as an example. “When I did 'Angels In America' almost 20 years ago, it was the height of the AIDs epidemic. People were coming to terms with it, so that play had such potency. I did 'The Crucible' a bit earlier, and it was a time when we were coming out of the '80s and the idea that 'greed is good'. People were reassessing what it means to be good, so 'The Crucible' had its moment in time. In 20 years time maybe 'The Events' won't have any impact, but I believe now is the right time”
'The Events' plays Her Majesty's Theatre 25 February – 5 March as part of Adelaide Festival which runs 26 February - 14 March. 
