Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ)
Kicking off the Brisbane Festival, Suzie Miller’s new play Strong is the New Pretty celebrates the blood, sweat and tears that helped create the Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) competition.
The world premiere at Brisbane’s Playhouse theatre captivated the audience with incisive observations about the difficulties faced by the players, coaches and advocates who worked to secure that first professional season of the AFLW.
The play is loosely based on the extraordinary story of three central figures in AFLW history.
The first female AFL Commissioner Sam Mostyn is reiminaged as the dynamic lawyer Alison Newtown, played by Lucy Bell. Tara Morice creates a fiesta as women’s football development manager called Jane Hooper, based on former AFL female football development manager Jan Cooper. And Bec Goddard, the first female coach of the Adelaide Crows, is transposed to Bev Heath, played by Amber McMahon.
Through blood, sweat and tears
The show opens with a total blackout filled with the sounds of children playing football. We hear some boys, who are clearly excluding a little girl. The sequence ends with her heart-wrenching plea: “kick it to me!”
The play is told through (often witty) monologues, supported by an energetic ensemble that fills an enormous black empty stage.
The opening scene puts the three central characters, Alison, Jane and Bev, in spotlights downstage.
The ensemble is placed upstage, behind microphones, where they act as a distorted Greek chorus showing the misogyny women face from the AFL hierarchy and within society more broadly.
We see standout performances by Bell – whose Alison faces sexual discrimination as a lawyer but uses this experience to strategise towards gender equality on the field – and Morice – whose down-to-earth Jane shows what a once-excluded little girl can achieve with patience and determination.
The characters forge on through adverse conditions and patriarchal barriers, such as unrealistic time constraints for training, being called “a bunch of lesbians”, and a last-minute change of venue for the Grand Final.
The ensemble cast members leap between characters and key historic moments. The audience is guided expertly, and at times comically, by bold white surtitles so even non-sports fans can understand what’s going on.
Morgan Roberts
Entertaining and thought-provoking
Sarah Giles’ direction captures the essence of team sports and transposes it to the stage using a combination of broad physical theatre and caricature, complete with collective clowning and distinctively ocker characters.
The play is first and foremost an entertaining romp. It draws you in with incredible storytelling and comedy, before leaving you to ponder the larger social issues.
One scene depicting the announcement of the first Adelaide Crows squad in 2017 shows where each of the players was when the draft was dropped.
Short sketches reveal fictionalised versions of the Adelaide Crows players’ daily lives, demonstrating the complexity of working full-time and parenting, while also finding the time to train professionally – often doing double the work of their male counterparts.
One player hears the news that she got in while working as a midwife in a birthing suite. She is comically distracted by the news, but when the baby is born, her pronouncement that “It’s a beautiful strong baby girl” resonates with hope for the future of women.
Morgan Roberts
Another highlight of the play is the physical recreation of Tayla Harris’ sensational 2019 kick that controversially led to misogynistic online trolling.
Onstage, Harris’ impressive kick is memorialised by an actor frozen in a vertical split. A team member holds her leg up the air, while she strategically leans on the back of another.
As the audience celebrates the extraordinary athleticism, a news reporter comically chronicles the sexist public furore. It’s one example of how Miller uses satire to expose the gendered prejudice of public discourse.
Not just a history lesson
Miller offers a masterclass in verbal footwork. Fast-paced monologues tell the AFLW’s history while cleverly shining a light on the discrimination women in Australia face more broadly. This is not just a history lesson. It shows how women can work together to bring about change in male-dominated environments.
Giles’ staging expertly captures the energy that permeated the entire 2017 season. While the monologues narrate the story, the ensemble leaps between rapid and slow-motion action, as well as carefully choreographed freeze frames that draw viewers into the whirlwind.
The first AFLW grand final was far more than just a moment in sporting history; it was a harbinger of social change. A decade later, Strong is the New Pretty takes this monumental moment and, with laser-sharp precision, shows the courage and determination of the women who stood up to a patriarchal establishment to make women’s football a reality.
Strong is the New Pretty is showing at the Brisbane Festival until September 19, before touring nationally to Canberra from September 24 to October 3, Geelong from October 8 to 11, and Sydney from October 22 to December 5.
Delyse Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/07/strong-is-the-new-pretty-suzie-millers-new-play-celebrates-the-women-who-fought-for-a-place-in-afl/