Playwright Future D Fidel's 'Prize Fighter' Brawls With Demons Of The Past

The boxing ring is an arena purpose-built for violence. But it is also a place of resilience, where the hardwired, primal instinct to fight and survive can reveal those most essential aspects of what it means to be human. It's little wonder then that boxing has long proven to be an excellent vehicle for drama, most notably in blockbusters like Rocky, Southpaw and Million Dollar Baby. And in these cinematic examples, you'll find similar narrative traits: a dramatic energy driven by a yearning to leave something behind. The boxing match becomes a redemptive journey, where the fight represents a struggle overcome, or a longed-for moment of cathartic closure.

Congolese-Australian playwright Future D Fidel's Prize Fighter is also a story about redemption. However, boxing is not the means of escape, but rather a prison of the past. Premiered at the 2015 Brisbane Festival, it follows the story of Isa, a Congolese man who arrived in Australia as a refugee, fleeing a country ripped apart by civil war. He is a promising and disciplined young boxing talent, but during his training for an Australian championship bout, it is not his body that fails him, but his mind. The punches he throws in the ring provoke horrifying flashbacks to a childhood psychologically scarred by almost unimaginable brutality.

"Boxing was the perfect medium for this story because it acts as such a clear metaphor for Isa's struggle," Fidel explains. "His opponent is not simply another fighter. It is his memories, and that idea of the mental overcoming the physical is exactly the same as you find in boxing."

"If there is a little hope, a little comedy, a little light in the way you tell that story, you keep the audience motivated."

The details of Isa's fictional past are rooted in a deeply personal truth for Fidel. Aged just 9-years-old, he was separated from his family and forced from his native East Congo by the bloody 1996 Civil War. He spent more than eight years in a Tanzanian refugee camp searching for his lost relatives, during which time he would discover that his mother had been killed in the Congo in 2001. Fidel's life began to change in 2004 when he was reunited with his sister and a year later he would be granted refugee status to come to Australia, aged 18.

Given the candid depth of Fidel's own experiences woven into the fabric of this play, the authenticity of the narrative is striking. Yet, there are complex sensitivities to consider when such traumas are repurposed in the service of entertainment. Boxing has a similar duality; violence as a spectacle, cheered, applauded and – at least for the winning opponent – rewarded. For Fidel, however, the mediums of theatre and sport have allowed him to speak in a way that is accessible to an Australian audience about a dark but largely unfamiliar chapter of recent geopolitical history.

"It's dangerous when you're trying to tell a bad story, because you can leave people terrified in a way that pushes them away," Fidel notes. "If there is a little hope, a little comedy, a little light in the way you tell that story, you keep the audience motivated, even though, at its core, it's about war and mass killings. One of the most important things for me when we were making this production was that we honoured the truth — the story we are telling has really happened. People have really gone through this, so you have to tell it in a respectful way, while still keeping a light at the end of the tunnel."

Far from merely being a device for making such horrors more palatable, the glimpses of humour, tenacity and playfulness in Prize Fighter — originally produced by Brisbane's La Boite Theatre and directed by the company's Artistic Director Todd MacDonald — also present a richer portrait of Congolese culture, revealing a spirit that is too often obscured by the atrocities that continue to take place in the DRC. To that end, Fidel has been careful not to allow earnest politicism to smother the individuality of his characters or the actors bringing them to life. "Ultimately, our aim is to create theatre that connects with an audience. We want them to be entertained so at the same time they are inspired to go away and learn more. This isn't a political message. It's a play, it's a boxing match, it's a fighting game."

La Boite Theatre and Melbourne International Arts Festival presents Prize Fighter from 9 Oct at Northcote Town Hall