Joan Didion's The White Album

Overview

No, not The Beatles record, but instead Joan Didion's seminal essay on 1960s American counterculture, taking in everything from the Black Panther movement to the Manson Family and a coterie of key LA musical figures. Award-winning director Lars Jan has adapted Didion's piece for theatre, building a performance where Mia Barron delivers the text as a number of stories of the time unfold around her. Joan Didion's The White Album has been touring American theatres and is an Australian exclusive for Sydney Festival. The performance features 25 audience members on stage acting as witnesses to the juxtaposing social upheaval of the 60s with our present day injustices. It promises to be a treat; as the first line of the essay says: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."