Co-produced with CityMoon Vietnamese Australian Youth Theatre, in collaboration
with the Phuoc Nue Temple.
A large site-specific community theatre show developed for the grounds of the Phuoc Nue
Temple in Wetherill Park. Powerhouse Youth Theatre and Citymoon saw this collaboration
as an extension of their previous large-scale site specific show, Journey’s West (1998). As
that show explored cross-cultural performance in the context of an Anglo Australian heritage
site, Finding the Buffalo was authored by an explicitly Asian site. Developed with a large
youth and community cast, and the temple community itself, Finding the Buffalo, brought
together a strong physical theatre style, and a traditional SE Asian Buddhism teaching, to
produce a rich, accessible and highly visual community theatre show. Large Vietnamese and
non-Vietnamese audiences enthusiastically welcomed the performance over four
performances in early March 2001.
