Anna K at Malthouse Theatre

They can’t bring you down. You can fight. For what you believe. For who, and what, you love.

It takes a lifetime to build a career with integrity and a single tweet to unravel it. Anna Kay, top rated television journalist, mother and wife is now a news subject herself, and the haters are piling on. She is discovering that no amount of credibility makes you impervious to the institutions that maintain the status quo. Truth at all costs, but best stay in your lane.

Starring Caroline Craig (Underbelly, Blue Heelers), directed by Carissa Licciardello, and written by Suzie Miller (Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer recently on London’s West End), Anna K weaves a breakneck story of romance, love, power, and justice. In a world promising equality, why isn’t the fight over?

"Anna K is an interrogation of how women in public roles are attacked by hostile voices intent on silencing them. In high-profile positions women risk significantly more negative criticism than men in the same positions, and furthermore also endure violently sexualised online comments and messages intended to intimidate and shame. The gendered nature of these act not only as a force to destroy women at the top of their game, but also as threatening warnings to other women seeking to occupy similarly high-profile roles in the media, politics and other spaces. While Anna K is inspired by Tolstoy, I am instead interested in a feminist interrogation. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina focusses on Levin’s need to warn against the passions of women as he seeks to uphold a woman’s domesticity in service of husband and children. I wanted to investigate how we still do this to women, and look to a different narrative conclusion." — Suzie Miller, Playwright

Writer: Suzie Miller

Director: Carissa Licciardello

Cast: Callan Colley, Caroline Craig, Louisa Mignone