This is a truly wonderful show! Paul and David and Sean - you could not have done a better job. I hope more of the world gets to see this outstanding stage event. Bring it on!

There are performance works that take you away from reality and there are others that draw you into the bone of it.
Version 1.0 and The Bougainville Photoplay Project take you on a journey of the latter.
If you didn’t read the synopsis of the show (which I like to avoid predominantly to keep my interpretation open) you
find yourself questioning which is the factual content and which is fiction. As the monologue continues from one story to the next, it becomes clear that all the content is fact.
Version 1.0 have successfully created and produced a number of shows based on Australian political issues that aren’t publicised often or at all. Their aim has been to bring to light these issues to the public performatively.
It is the amalgamation of controversial content, Paul Dwyer’s research and performative tact as well as David Williams who directs on behalf of the Version 1.0 team that creates an intimate and enlightening show with the ability to connect to any kind of audience.
Lauren Batschowanow- Performing Artist

At a time when people are ducking at the words ‘economic crisis’ ricocheting off skyscrapers, homes, and even arts centers, society seems to be choosing light hearted comedy over tragedy when it comes to art.  So Version 1.0 made a brave move with The Bougainville Photoplay Project, bringing together political debate and emotional personal accounts in a piece of art challenging attitudes and comfort.  The production nevertheless did not scrounge on humour, which was a strong and also effective counterpart, in what felt like a part lecture part conversational piece, dealing with social and political issues surrounding the civil war in Bougainville.  Performer Dr Paul Dwyer bears his soul by sharing nostalgia of his father’s orthopedic work in Bougainville; accompanied by images screened by Sean Bacon, along with an array of slides, diaries, clippings and documents sprawled on walls and table.  The intimate setting nourishes this stylistic approach to what is ultimately a discussion with a founding notion towards reconciliation.  Overall Version 1.0 presents a multifaceted voyage of personal and factual measures, as history challenges us to look deeper.  It also reminds audiences that we can look to art for more than just the comfortable.

Disarmingly personal, the Bougainville Photoplay Project is a jolting reminder of a seemingly forgotten chapter in the Pacific’s recent past.

Dr Paul Dwyer cleverly captures the people, and perceptions of the people, of Bougainville. Notes, slides and newspaper articles from his father, a highly-regarded orthopaedic surgeon, show Bougainville pre-war. Strongly colonial, heavy with missionaries, yet seemingly serene, the peace was shattered with the commencement of copper mining by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. The mine triggered a twenty five year long struggle to gain autonomy from Papua New Guinea.

Dr Dwyer himself travelled to the troubled islands to witness the reconciliation ceremonies that followed the war. He displays a mixture of admiration for his late father’s work, amazement at the ability of the Bougainville people to forgive and shame for the role Australia played in the war. Too soon have we forgotten Australia’s arming and training of PNG’s soldiers.

The stories of Dr Dwyer and his father interlock with archival news and promotional footage. The result is a show which reminds us that Australia still has so much to work to do in our own region.

Paul Dwyer’s Bougainville unfolds delicately. The footsteps he follows are those of his father, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who traveled to Bougainville in the 1960s and performed many operations that assisted local people to walk. In one fantastic photo he is seen dressing the wounds of a leper. But so much has happened since then. A giant Australian copper mine stripped away the forests and polluted the environment; a civil war; a deaf, dumb and blind former colonial power complicit with the PNG military. Dwyer’s starting point is restorative justice practices in the historical light of the conflict between the BRA, the PNG Defence Force and local mercenaries. He reveals in shocking detail the results of the conflict and its impact on the relationship between local communities some of whom were paid as mercenaries by the PNGDF. He invites his audience to assess our level of engagement and responsibility and he humbly offers us the chance to have a dialogue with the people of Bougainville about the current status of the relationship between Australia and its former colony. All this is managed with an effortless theatricality that switches between slides, Super 8, video, extracts from letters, recreations and captivating storytelling. The connection Paul Dwyer has with Bougainville, thanks to his father, is heartfelt and tinged with pathos. There are slides of his siblings on trips with his Dad and continual references to his Mum’s attic where he has located the treasure trove of material describing his father’s medical work – stuff he says is on migration from her attic to his “via the Old Fitz”. It’s a modest claim. This show has already toured widely, including to the UK. He describes, almost in passing, the premature death of his Father from lung cancer, and the audience is charged to the grief of Paul the small boy. The intertwine of this personal and political Bougainville story evolves with a piquant poignancy. Paul Dwyer’s gentle eccentricities cast him in a particular mould. An intellectual with a great sense of himself, his family history, his country and its colonial past, he uses his own ethnography to entertain and educate. His first words, “Good evening, I’m Dr Paul Dwyer from the University of Sydney”, place him specifically as an authority but are ironic, sharply undercut by the spinal column he carries onto the small stage at the Old Fitz. Echoes of “Dr Livingston, I presume …” float in the theatrical ether. Highly recommended.