Julia

By Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Sarah Goodes

Sold out and showered with critical adoration on its premiere in 2023, Julia comes to Wollongong for a hotly anticipated and unmissable two-week season.  

In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a speech that sent shockwaves around the world. Now, over a decade later, a group of Australia’s finest theatre-makers have created a stirring and inspiring re-examination of that moment, and a revelatory portrait of the woman who made it happen. 

Julia is both a compelling insight into the person behind the public mask, with Justine Clarke’s extraordinary performance at its centre, and a reflection on the experience of women in contemporary politics. In a thrilling coming together of history and art, this incredible dramatic imagining renders a powerful monologue that takes us through key moments in Prime Minister Gillard’s life, culminating in an electrifying verbatim performance of the ‘misogyny speech’.

This play is a fictional imagining by the playwright, of true events in the life of Julia Gillard. It combines references to true events, extracts from published works, interviews, fictitious commentary and opinions which the Playwright and the Producers believe to be honestly held. Ms Gillard has not endorsed, nor had any artistic input into the production of, this play.