SX Magazine
Heat in on in Kitchen - Interview with Van Badham
23 April 2003

Not many young writers have been banned from their home town, declared an enemy of the people and added to the list of America's most wanted. Wollongong playwright Van (Vanessa) Badham has managed all this and more, though a recent stint at the Edinburgh fringe resulted in rave reviews and Wollongong suddenly wanting to know her again. She finds it hilarious.

"See, now that the horrible English think there's some merit to my work, everybody's lining up to kiss my arse. I'm repaying them by leaving the country. I was called 'pointless, predictably and sporadically amusing', which I'm thinking of putting on my grave", she says.

"In Wollongong, the cancer rate is 16 times higher than average and it has the only copper smelter in a residential area in the whole world. I wrote Kitchen about what I hate most, the human resource people who are globalising the steel industry out of existence. The city theatre gave me all this money, then refused to put the play on.

The trilogy of plays being brought to London includes Capital, a savage attack on post 9/11 US imperialism.

"One of my friends got killed in the World Trade Center. It was in the media as propaganda, like Bali, where grief was stolen by the spin doctors. The play is going to be performed in New York, which should be something else," she said.