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LIsten to Us

By Sam Van Zweden

 MELBOURNE - Trying to understand what it means to be a young Muslim woman in Australia brought people together from all parts of the community on a recent Saturday afternoon in Melbourne. 

An audience of about 30 people met at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre on Lonsdale Street to discuss issues affecting young Muslim girls.

The Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition presented the last show in their series of plays entitled ‘Listen To Us!’ on November 22nd.

 

This performance looked at everyday concerns in the Muslim community. While there was a common theme of assimilation and identity struggles, the scenes looked more at the issues that don’t make headlines, things like body image, family relationships and bullying.
 
“We believe that their issues are your issues too,” said Melba Marginson, VIRWC’s executive officer.
 
And so they were – scenes showed the girls in situations familiar to every person in the audience. One scene showed a girl standing up to her parents, another showed a girl seen as a bad influence on her friends, and the last scene showed a young girl being bullied about her clothes.
 
All these concerns were discussed in ways that could be helpful to any young girl faced with these issues, not just in the Muslim community.
 
All performances in the ‘Listen to Us!’ series were presented in the Forum Theatre style, which originated in Latin America as a platform for communities to push for social change. Audiences are presented with a scene which shows an issue as it is, and are then asked to participate and actively change the outcome of a scene.
 
 “These are the big issues for the communities,” Ms Marginson said. “If these are the things that bother them every day, then they are big issues.”
 
Though this audience was small there were plenty of suggestions and different views of how each difficult scene could be handled more positively. A strong sense of community came about in the room as people seemed to realise the potential for change on an everyday level.
 
“I think people have been genuinely grateful for the opportunity to look inside some of these issues, because I don’t think that these issues are that visible... and then you ask people to engage in trying to understand being that person, I think it really makes you think,” said Ms Simmonds.
 
The coalition has recorded all four performances and plans to distribute them to policy-makers and community organisations to aim for a deeper understanding of the issues faced by minority groups.
 
“This should be used instead of those boring consultations, where you have the bureaucrats with their structures and graphs... it’s very interactive, this is the way to go,” said Ms Marginson.
 
Other performances in the series called for change toward issues faced by Cook Island women, Sudanese women, and women from Whittlesea. 
 
The series of performances marks 100 years of women having the vote, and comes shortly after the 10th anniversary of the VIRWC.