Brisbane hosts premiere of play about the creation of women’s AFLW
In Brisbane, Australia, the Brisbane Festival hosted the world premiere of Strong is the New Pretty, a play by Australian playwright Suzie Miller. The production is an artistic reinterpretation of real events that preceded the creation of the AFLW women’s Australian Football League.
As ABC News Australia reports, Miller conceived the play after attending the first AFLW grand final in 2017 on the Gold Coast, where the Brisbane Lions and Adelaide Crows played. The playwright said she saw girls at the stadium cheering for female footballers and perceived it as a generational shift.
Seven years before the league’s launch
In 2010, an AFL-commissioned report on the state of the sport recommended establishing professional national women’s competitions by 2020. Miller’s play focuses on the seven-year struggle to turn the idea of a women’s league into reality.
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One of the participants in the first AFLW season was Ally Anderson, who was drafted by the Brisbane Lions. She recalled that as a child she could not imagine herself as a professional athlete, and after the first season she photographed the locker room, the Gabba stadium and her teammates because she considered participation in the league a one-time opportunity.
Tour of Australia
Since the first season, Anderson has become an AFLW champion twice with the Brisbane Lions, won the league’s best and fairest award and set the AFLW record for the number of matches played. The play premiered during round four of the 11th AFLW season. After Brisbane, the production will be shown in Canberra, Geelong and Sydney.
After completing work on the text, Miller attended an under-nine girls’ match in Sydney. According to her, the young footballers played while being supported by their brothers; the playwright links this experience to the idea of equal opportunities in sport.
