Uncle Jack

Uncle Jack, an original play written by Perth playwright Ross Lonnie was accepted for Office of Research and Innovation by Edith Cowan University due to it's topical issues surrounding ANZAC Day and the return of Australian soldiers who were dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The Blue Room Theatre made Uncle Jack part of their 2014 season and premiered the play on the eve of Australia 100th Anniversary of the Anzacs. As an Armenian-Australian, I related to the anniversary of the Anzacs differently. To me, the day embodied the beginnings of Armenia’s devastating 1915 Genocide. While there is no doubt about my empathy for what Australia’s war veterans endured, I resented the lack of recognition of the fact that, on the same day Australia was fighting with the Ottoman Empire in Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire was slaughtering over one and half million Armenians in towns and villages very close to Gallipoli, in Cilicia. My resentment was enhanced, in part, by the timing of Uncle Jack. It was produced to commemorate the centenary of Gallipoli, concurrent with the centenary of the Armenian Genocide. Therefore, as a researcher-director I used the play as a way of highlighting scholar Jacques Derrida's (1984) and Pierre Bourdieu's (1982) ideas of Difference, by refocusing my emotions towards the camaraderie shared between the Armenians and the Australians who were combating an analogous losing battle.