Roller Derby is more than just a sport, says Mama Does Derby director Clare Watson. It’s a lifestyle, a family, a movement. And that’s why everything in the play is on wheels.
Loosely based on Watson and her daughter Ivy, the show follows Mama, who is like “trying to put a leash on a tornado” and her 16-year-old daughter Billie “doing the worrying for both of them” when they move to a regional town. Similarly, it was in a far-flung Melbourne suburb that Watson met the rough and riotous pastime of roller derby – a skating contact sport – for real, way back in 2009.
“I rocked up to this place and there were thousands of people there and it was one of the most electric, thrilling nights I’ve ever had,” she says. “The sport itself was fast and fearless and the athletes were completely awe-inspiring and heroic. I was like ‘how could this kind of energy be harnessed in a theatre experience?’”
When she was appointed artistic director at Windmill Production Company – renowned for its original work that “never talks down” to its young and family audiences – she knew it was time.
While many creative works use sport as a vehicle to tell a deeper story, roller derby is the crowning jewel that cannot be extracted from this show.
Mama Does Derby will have its very own track built at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, with athletes from the Adelaide Roller Derby League forming a chorus on this unique stage.
“The show’s also set in [Mama and Billie’s] home, so [designer] Jonathan Oxlade has created this brilliant set where there’s not a thing that comes on or off stage that’s not on wheels,” Watson says. “It’s like everything flows and moves, and then we have these moments of absolute clarity when we have a scene, and then everything’s moving again.”
Full-contact and high-velocity, a game of risk and danger, roller derby brings its speed to the production, but what derby stands for also has an impact.
The sport’s embracing of the LGBTQI+ community and people who don’t fit traditional athletic body types is its strongest hallmark, with many participants taking on drag-inspired alter-ego player names.
“While we’re not explicitly raising an argument about inclusivity [in the script], I’m hoping that’s an idea we’re supporting through representation of amazing humans in the work,” Watson says. “We’ve got members of the team who are non-binary and trans, so it feels like it’s in the fabric of the work itself, because it’s in the fabric of our society.”
Part-theatre and part-sport, Mama Does Derby is also part-concert, with a live band performing covers of punk songs, and punk takes on pop and rock classics throughout; Watson promises “it’s going to be loud.”
“For some young audiences this will be their first engagement with theatre, and I hope this creates a hook that gets them to come back to the theatre again and again and again,” she says.
While aiming to recreate the elation she felt at her first derby bout in 2009, Watson says the show and the sport also have a deeper resonance in the quieter moments.
“Even though it tells a story about a single parent and child’s experience, I think that experience is really universal to every family at a time where the young person is needing to individuate and push away and find a bit of space from their family to gain a sense of who they are in themselves,” she says.
“That can be a painful and difficult and tumultuous moment for any family. I hope that what this show says is that with community and care and love, everyone’s going to be ok.”
Mama Does Derby, Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre, 27 Feb-8 Mar, various times