A number of actors including some of Tongan, Italian and Palestinian ancestry walk onto a stage.
They've been cast in an Australian production of William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.
And while their ethnic heritage shouldn't really be an issue, in the world of Australian theatre it's still considered unusual to see performers on stage who truly reflect Australia's cultural diversity.
This report by Peggy Giakoumelos.
(Extract from play)
That's from a contemporary adaptation of English playwright William Shakespeare'sThe Comedy of Errors.
Written in the late 1500s, The Comedy of Errors tells the tale of two sets of identical twins who are separated at birth.
Years later, their lives unknowingly collide, not in England centuries ago, but in contemporary Kings Cross in Sydney.
Imara Savage is the director of the production whose casting, goes against what is usually expected in such a play.
She explains why she intentionally decided to do this.
"It would be very strange in the contemporary world if that city was in anyway homogenous, so I have 10 actors playing a variety of roles and it was really important to me the genuine makeup of Australia's contemporary society. So that was the first reason and the second reason is I suppose because I am an Australian but I'm not Anglo-Australian and from my own perspective when I started out acting, when I was a kid, and I did a lot of acting because acting was something I wanted to do and I didn't see a reflection on Australian television primarily but stage also of people who looked like me. And I found that really disappointing and it was something I remember very strongly and now that I am in a position where I am able to make decisions, about whose put on stage, it's really important to me who is on stage genuinely represents Australia today."
Chris Kohn is working on a government-funded pilot initiative working out ways of involving more migrant communities in Australian theatre both as participants and audiences.
He says there is a risk that some of Australia's migrant communities don't see theatre as an artform relevant to them.
It's a perception Chris Kohn says many of those working in the industry are trying to change.
"I think that if you look around the audiences and you look on stages, you're not seeing the diversity of Australian culture, it's not a representative space. It's a problem for a few reasons, but it's an indicator that it's not part of everyone's lives. Even if you compare it to something like reality television, or sport or other kind of domains like that, you're seeing more diverse representation and it kind of means for young people considering what they want to do with their lives. They're not seeing the role models. I think it's really important for everyone in theatre in Australia to really grapple with how has this come to be, and what can we do about it, because until the faces on the stage are changing and representing diverse Australia, the audiences aren't going to change."
Lee Lewis is the artistic director of the Griffith Theatre Company and she's written a paper about ethnic diversity in the Australian theatre industry.
She decided to write the paper after returning from the United States a few years ago and noticing that the sorts of stories being told in the U-S were more culturally-diverse - as were the casts.
Lee Lewis thinks Australian theatre needs to be more pro-active in making changes, rather than waiting for generational change to occur.
"People think that they're not contributing but they actually are but not actively changing something. So it was trying to shine a light on really the power that directors have and inadvertently it opened a big conversation up about the nature of companies and the stories being told. It's a question of actively making those choices consistently, so it's token if it happens once, other times if it's happened three or four of five times and essentially what I'm interested in is when people expect a diverse cast unless there's a really good reason for there not to be."
Stephanie Son is one of the founders and co-artistic director of The Colour Blind Project, a theatre company which works with performers from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
The aim of the project is to cast performers of multicultural backgrounds in roles that the group says some actors would not normally be cast in.
Stephanie Son says her Asian heritage has made getting work in Australia a challenge, hence her decision to start the company.
"It's a practice that is commonly used mainly in the states, mainly in the UK. We started the company because we don't feel that's a common practice in Australia. In terms of colour-blind casting, it's basically casting people of a particular role, when the role is not specifically written as anything ethnically specific. So that could be anyone of Asian descent, Middle Eastern descent etc... and putting them in a role that could be played by anybody so it could be the best friend, the girlfriend, the boyfriend, the lead role and putting someone in that role despite the fact that they're of a multicultural background."
But when do attempts at broader representation veer into tokenism?
Chris Kohn says while it's naive to ignore the first impression made by physical appearance, it's important for theatre-makers to challenge themselves and audiences with innovative ways of telling old stories and creating new ones.
"Anybody can play any role, at the same time we do read markers like race when we meet someone for the first time. It's one fo the markers we read along with gender and race and age and all these things. We can't really discount those things and pretend they don't exist. The very least as theatre-makers are story-tellers are meaning makers, and representation is at the heart of that and so grappling with those questions should be part of what we do."
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