Theatre stages are filled with precipice-like moments. Black Brass at Belvoir presents us with a singular precipice that is rarely seen on stages but happens to Australians every day.

For refugees and immigrants there are seemingly an eternity of moments between arriving in Australia and the brassy citizenship ceremony. As part of a bureaucratic rite-of-passage men, women and children must take part in ritual meetings with immigration to prove their value, or in this case their love, so that a ‘new life’ can truly become theirs. Black Brass explores the grief, reckoning and loss experienced by an immigrant as they deal with an old life that is often emotionally bigger and more all-encompassing than the simple life they hope to have.

Black Brass, directed by Matt Edgerton (Barking Gecko Theatre’s Fully Sikh, A Ghost in my Suitcase), is inspired by interviews with people from Perth’s Zimbabwean, Sudanese, South African, Central Congo, Mauritius, Nigerian, Congolese and Kenyan communities. Written by Kenyan-born writer and performer Mararo Wangai (The Last Great Hunt’s The Advisors, Black Swan State Theatre Company’s The Tempest), these stories have been extracted for their essence and woven into a narrative delivered through monologues sown together with music composed by Mahamudo...