Dan Giovannoni’s award-winning multi-generational migrant tale Jurassica comes to Geelong this month during an interstate tour.
Giovannoni won the 2015 Green Room Award for Best New Australian Writing for the play, on an eight-venue tour of Victoria, New South Wales and ACT.
The child of migrant parents and grandparents, Giovannoni has often sat in the space between being Australian and being Italian, experiencing a slight disconnect between both.
“This is not my life story by any means,” he said.
“But it would be silly and incorrect to suggest I’m not in there somehow.
“I think any writer is in their work, and in Jurassica much of what the characters experience and talk about reflects my own experiences.”
Jurassica tells the story of Ralph and Sara, who left Tuscany in the 1950s as part of the “populate or perish” scheme.
Together they built a new life in a concrete front yard home in suburban Moorabbin.
Grandson Luca struggles to talk to his father and grandfather until Ralph is rushed to hospital.
Through the unlikely connection of interpreter Kaja, who fled war-torn Belgrade, Luca learns to reconnect.
Performed in Italian and English, Giovannoni’s work deals with very current themes of displacement, home and how our past shapes our future.
And yes, dinosaurs play an important part in it too.
Jurassica opens at Geelong Performing Arts Centre on August 29 as part of the 2018 Deakin University Theatre Season.
