A play about three ordinary Australians, four refugees and the extraordinary life-changing relationships that developed between them…

A sell-out hit at the 2004 Sydney Festival, followed by a hugely successful tour of NSW, Canberra & in Melbourne in 2005. Devised by Ros Horin from material gathered from in-depth interviews with the people who are the characters in the play, Through The Wire is a verbatim theatre work about refugees and their Australian Detention Centre experience.

Through The Wire is about ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations halfway around the world from their homes. It is a story of people wanting a new life, but first having to endure restraint, persecution and a long time not knowing what will happen next. Through The Wire also tells the stories of a few Australians who took steps to develop life-changing relationships with the detainees.

Through The Wire features Iranian refugee Shahin Shafaei, who tells his own story of fleeing his homeland and of falling in love with Gaby, an officer he met while in Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia. Live music is composed and performed by Kurdish refugee Jamal Alrekabi and imagery is drawn from work by a number of Australian artists including Hossein Valmanesh and Guan Wei.

“An extraordinary work of compassion, wit and moral urgency. The play has been a smash hit from its first Sydney performance. Not only its amazing stories, but also the complex theatricality of its performance are compelling.” The Age

Through The Wire is an attempt to get behind the prejudices, clichés and fear-tactics surrounding the refugee issue, to reveal the human faces and stories obscured by invectives like ‘illegal’ and ‘queue-jumper’, and to re-activate our capacity for empathy and compassion. It presents gripping true tales of repression and exile, dangerous escapes, powerful friendships, resilience and survival inside Australian detention.