When the curtain rises on the new oratorio Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan it reveals a lone male figure suspended high above the stage, twisting and turning seemingly in agony - or is it ecstasy?
Audiences at the Adelaide Festival, where Watershed received its world premiere in 2022, were transfixed by the spectacular, terrible beauty of the opening scene.
“It has this kind of miraculous effect on the work,” says director Neil Armfield. “You can feel the audience gasping as the curtain goes up and a man descending over this strip of water very, very slowly. A vulnerable human body over water seems really rich as a symbol of the human spirit.”
Mark Oates and Mason Kelly in Adelaide Festival’s 2022 production of Watershed.Credit: Andrew Beveridge
Watershed, which receives its Sydney premiere on Friday, is based on the murder of George Duncan, a gay man who died in 1972 after being thrown into Adelaide’s River Torrens by a group of men.
Two police officers were later acquitted of the killing and there has yet to be a conviction. However, three years after Duncan’s death, South Australia became the first state in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality.
“I was aware of it at the time and that there was clearly something very weird happening in Adelaide,” says Armfield, who was at Homebush Boys High School in 1972. “But I probably couldn’t have given details to anyone who asked me about it except that there had been a horrible gay hate crime. They didn’t call it that then, it was called poofter bashing.”
Director Neil Armfield wanted to find “some poetic idea beyond the horrible facts”.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Fourteen years later, Armfield himself was lucky to survive a gay hate attack in inner-city Sydney.
“I was king hit and there were four or five men that I assumed wanted to kill me,” he says. “I was screaming, ‘Why are you doing this?’ There was a gush of blood which freaked them out, but I knew if I dropped to the ground they would kick me.”