It begins, as always, with a storm, and a shipwreck - as good a place as any to begin a play. But no one did it quite like Shakespeare.
And for playwright Helen Machalias, the Bard himself had the best guidance on how to set the scene.
And thus, her new play, This Rough Magic, begins with the time-honoured setting.
But the ship is not an antique thing, with tall sails, creaking timber and passengers in evening dress, or robes.
It's an Indonesian fishing boat overloaded with asylum seekers.
And the rocky shores on which the boat is dashed are not part of a magical island, a colonial outpost, a Disney fantasy land or even a picture-perfect tropical paradise - not the kind you're thinking about, anyway.
In fact, when Machalias, a self-confessed Shakespeare tragic, first started thinking about Christmas Island as a setting for her own Tempest-inspired epic, she did the obvious thing first - she googled it. And what came up were endless pictures of, yes, a picture-perfect tropical paradise.
This tiny island in the Indian Ocean, an Australian territory that's far closer to Java and Sumatra, is best known, to most Australians, for two things. The annual migration of millions of native red crabs (hence the island's moniker), and the offshore detention centre built there by the Australian government in 2006.
"The two linking ideas for me in bringing together The Tempest and Christmas Island Detention Centre was the character of Prospero; he's an iconic Shakespearean character and I was really interested in exploring him as someone seeking asylum," she says.
"And the other part of it was the location itself, of Christmas Island, that idea of setting it on an island and all the exciting possibilities that brings up."
She decided to focus on the 2010 boat disaster involving a boat that came to be known as Siev 221 that, while carrying 89 asylum seekers and three crew members smashed against the rocks of Christmas Island. Fifty people died and 42 were rescued; it was the worst maritime disaster in Australia in more than a century.
She first pitched the play to Caroline Stacey, artistic director of The Street Theatre in Canberra before the COVID pandemic, and began writing in lockdown. The first creative development session with the theatre happened, as so many things in 2020, over Zoom.
Machalias was initially adamant that while the play would be a kind of "conversation" with The Tempest, it would not involve magic. No monsters, no airy sprites.
But Stacey was equally adamant that at least some magic make its way into the script. Michalias says the play is richer for it, particularly because many of the characters - especially those seeking asylum from the ocean, are Iranian.
"It's a really good example of why writers benefit from a process like that, from having other creative collaborators," she says.
"Obviously, magic and mythology are a huge part of Persian storytelling, so it's really relevant to both The Tempest having that magic in there, but also the the narrative of the communities that we're talking about here as well."
Melbourne-based director Beng Oh has been in the business since the late 1990s, and has almost made a point of avoiding Shakespeare. Until now, that is; when he first read the script of This Rough Magic, he was hooked.
"It's one of those plays I think I almost loved before I read it, because the premise was brilliant," he says.
"I don't know where Helen pulled it out from, but the minute you hear about it, you go wow.
"The link is amazing. And then when you plough into the work, it's so layered and she skillfully draws in not just Shakespeare, but... aspects of Iranian culture, Persian culture as well."
A migrant himself - he came to Australia from Malaysia as a teenager to study law and never left - he was drawn early to the theatre (after abandoning the law) and has staged a vast range of productions, often focusing on new works and queer theatre.
"I have consciously avoided doing Shakespeare, because I always feel, what can I bring to the table, I suppose," he says.
Not surprisingly, the notion of mashing up one of the great Shakespearean epics with contemporary Australian politics was enticing.
"Whenever I embark on a project or read a script, I'm hunting for resonance - that thing where if you read something, and you can't stop thinking about it, then that means something within you is responding to this text," he says.
"I guess the other thing is, I'm always drawn to stuff which I feel I haven't seen, or it's new, or it's a different way of looking at things, or which explores the possibilities of what theatre can do."
In This Rough Magic, Machalias has held on to key Shakespearean signposts - Prospero is there, along with Miranda, Caliban and Ariel, and the play, of course, begins with a shipwreck - while interrogating the audience via the main characters, who speak directly to us via a microphone.
"One of the skillful things Helen does is she uses The Tempest as the lens through which we look at another story we think we know, which is of course, asylum seekers," Oh says.
"And by mixing up the two, she makes it new again. She makes it strange again, she makes it unfamiliar again, in a really good way. And there's almost a doubling to the characters because of their names. We bring our idea or sense of The Tempest with us, and we interpret it through that and she has a lot of fun with it."
On some level, Machalias can sympathise with Oh's initial aversion to grappling with the works of Shakespeare on the stage, especially when there's so much new material around. But This Rough Magic uses The Tempest's epic nature as a starting pointing and a framework. The title itself is from an original line spoken by Prospero. But what happens inside diverges from the original.
"A lot of the themes of The Tempest are there in This Rough Magic, themes around forgiveness and belonging, and dislocation and things like that. And some of the characters have similar qualities," she says.
"Where it diverges is the plot ... It's a very different sequence of events and outcomes and all those kinds of things. There's a lot of The Tempest language in there, but often used in unexpected and surprising ways. So I might give lines from one character to another because it fits better. I'll use a famous line ironically, in a different context.
"I think there'll be something there for the Shakespeare lovers, but it's not going to feel like what you might expect of a Shakespeare adaptation."
So does the play have an ultimate message, or is it art for art's sake?
"I think hopefully, it's a bit of both," she says.
"I think plays are at their best when they're making audiences think differently about the world around them, and shining a light on things that might not be front of mind for people in their everyday lives.
"But at the same time, if you're hitting people over the head with a didactic message, that's usually not a very effective play either, so I would absolutely hope that this play shifts hearts and minds, but that audience members watching it feel that they've been encouraged to make up their own minds and assessments rather than it sort of being being drummed into them."
- This Rough Magic by Helen Machalias is at The Street Theatre November 10-19. thestreet.org.au. Helen Machalias will be in a pre-show conversation with Shelly Higgs on November 16 at 6.30pm. thestreet.org.au
