Vic, Zaza and Chris are political insiders hustling their way to the top.
Educated, opinionated and passionate millennials, they’re sick of being pigeon-holed and held back because of their race, or their incompetent bosses. They want influence, they want change, they want to take over Parliament House. But with the odds stacked against them in a country less ‘woke’ than it cares to admit, they know it’s going to take some serious behind-the-scenes savvy.
They leave that bar drunk on power, with a plan to take over the world. The first step is to find a non-threatening, non-thinking white guy to use as a political puppet. The next step is to get him elected, by any means possible. As their plan comes to fruition Vic, Zaza and Chris become more tangled in it than they could ever have predicted. Will they change the system? Or will the system change them?
How to Rule the World is a stinging satire on Australian politics from award-winning playwright Nakkiah Lui (Black is the New White).
“I couldn’t not write How To Rule The World,” Lui says. “The world and rhetoric of how we talk about our community has changed drastically in the last few years, equally, lines of division feel like they’ve become bigger. I wanted to be able to talk to those who are different to me and that felt more and more impossible. I wrote this play because I wanted to talk to people and urgently want to at least ask the questions I had on mind.”
“I wanted to explore the theme of Aboriginal politics as being inclusive to other people who hold different values to the mainstream myth of Australia. I wanted to ask the question, what does Aboriginal equality in the future mean for everyone in this country?”
“I wanted to try and understand how politics gets away with being so removed from the people and how democracy can be used for individual power as opposed to the progress of the majority. So often in Australia, political satire is the realm of White men: Whiteness gets to be invisible. The rest of us non-Whites are just politics. I wanted to satirise politics and powerful, rich white men.”
While How to Rule the World is a biting political satire, Lui says it is above all a play about resistance and duty, which she wants to give audiences a sense of hope.
“One of theatres greatest attributes is that it is inviting, it welcomes thought and when it tells a story it embraces an audience into a space,” Lui says. “I want the audience to feel like they are able to talk about politics and the world without our difference of opinion. I hope that How to Rule the World makes people feel valued, that enables and provokes people to engage in change. I hope it encourages them to look at those next to them and to believe in their hope.”
