Valentine began writing the play after watching an ABC Television programme (Stateline) in 2003, which documented the experiences of three Indigenous women – Marjorie, Coral, and Marlene – who had been incarcerated at the Girls Home.
- Alana Valentine (2007)[2]The play was first performed by Company B of Belvoir St Theatre on 21 March 2007 (until 22 April 2007),[3] directed by Wesley Enoch, and the script was later published in July 2007.
[5] It was Australia's longest operating state-controlled ‘child welfare’ institution, holding between 160 and 200 inmates at one time and, in total, potentially more than 30,000 children passing through its doors.
[6]“What happened to us was just criminal – there were rapes going on, there were bashings – not just a little smack in the face, there were kicks... All I remember is big black boots coming into ya all the bloody time.”[4] (Field notes, 2 April 2011, from Franklin, 2014: 162)Public pressure and media exposure eventually sparked a government inquiry and investigation into the conditions, regulations, and staff misconduct (which, when revealed, prompted the Home's eventual closure) the girls were subject to – given the reports of brutal physical, emotional, mental, and sexual violence that occurred as "strict discipline" and "extreme" punishments[4] behind closed doors.
In flashbacks, the girls re-enact each other's experiences at the home: their arrival (and the court trial that brought Marlene there), their medical examinations by ‘Dr Fingers’, their chores, and their abuses and mistreatment - sometimes by invisible guards, sometimes one another (especially to Maree), and sometimes to themselves (in acts of self-harm).
This style of theatre can be understood as the recording and compilation of interviews and conversations with a community about a topic or event (usually of some significance) to be used as the direct content or creative stimulus for the development of a script and dramatised performance.
The other conventions of the genre can be likened to those of Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre,[11] and include: Valentine describes Parramatta Girls as "massaged verbatim" – which captures “the spirit, the soul, the way of being in the world that those women were” (quoted in Oades, 2010, p. 59)[10] - rather than composing and portraying precise re-presentations.
To compose the play, Valentine met, talked to, and gathered the stories and experiences of more than 35 women (former-inmates) through in-depth face-to-face interviews, phone conversations, and some while waiting to go in to a reunion being held at the site on 3 November 2003.
She said the goal of this reading was "truth telling" (p. 10), because these women felt they had never and would never be heard or believed if they told their stories, and breaking that was the first thing Valentine wanted to address.
[15] The cast included Di Adams, Kylie Coolwell, Elaine Crombie, Sandy Velini, Kym Parrish, Christine Greenough, Amanda Marsden[16] In 2014, Riverview Productions staged the play for a third time from 3 to 17 May in Lennox Theatre, Parramatta.
Belvoir St Theatre's promotions describe the play as a "joyous and heartbreaking... stirring tribute to mischief and humour in the face of hardship and inequality".