‘Quite magic’: The Sydney Festival show transforming Town Hall into a roller derby track

It was always going to be hard for actress Amber McMahon to learn to roller skate as an adult.

It became even more challenging rehearsing a new Sydney Festival show set in the wild, high-energy, full-contact sport of roller derby when an accident on a previous production – she is wary about giving too many details – left her concussed and with whiplash.

But by opening night of Mama Does Derby next Thursday, McMahon will be ready to play a single mother who takes up roller derby, which worries her more careful 16-year-old daughter, played by Elvy-Lee Quici.

“It’s been a real journey in fear,” McMahon says of learning to skate. “It’s much harder than you think it is because people who are skating just look so awesome. But there’s something that’s been quite magic about the process.”

The world premiere of the show will transform Sydney Town Hall next week.

In recent years, the interior of one of the city’s most beautiful buildings has been turned into a tennis court for the Evonne Goolagong Cawley play Sunshine Super Girl, a beach for the opera Sun & Sea and, at the festival last year, a Wild West pioneer town for the stage show Dark Noon.

This festival, one of the city’s most beautiful buildings will house a roller derby track, with skaters drawn from Sydney teams, who move sets around as well as perform.

The largely female sport has two teams of skaters in helmets and pads who often take on colourful names – Drew Barrymore’s 2009 roller derby film Whip It featured Babe Ruthless, Bloody Holly and Eva Destruction – and score points by skating through their blocking rivals.

Celebrated actress-writer-director Virginia Gay, who created the show with Clare Watson from Adelaide theatre company Windmill and wrote the script, is thrilled about taking over the Town Hall.

“The last 10 years of the Sydney Festival, that’s the place where the really exciting thing happens,” she says. “We were like, ‘and it’s us this year? Oh my god, that’s so extraordinary’.”

Gay describes Mama Does Derby as live theatre turned up to 150 per cent.

“We’ve got a live band,” she says. “We’ve got all of these incredible movers. We’ve got a great story with heart. We’ve got jokes.”

Watson, who is directing the show, discovered roller derby while working on a show about artistic roller skating in 2009.

“I was instantly hooked [by] these women on skates who are powerful and strong and hilarious,” she says. “It felt risky and dangerous and the crowd was on fire. It was such a fun night.”

Watson trained for roller derby but admits she chickened out before competing.

“It’s a game that has a lot of risk,” she says. “At the time, I was a single parent of a very small child and I just knew our lives couldn’t manage if I even sprained an ankle, living in our little upstairs apartment.

“But I held on to this desire to participate in derby and now it’s found its way into the stage.”

They aimed to create a show that was “as daggy and endearing” as roller derby in Australia.

Gay, whose previous collaborations with Watson include the gender-flipped Cyrano, wrote a fictional story that drew on the relationship between Watson and her daughter, Ivy, 22.

“As soon as I got to know people in derby, I was like ‘oh, these are the kind of people I adore’ - these big-hearted, lo-fi, fearless adventurers,” she says.

“They’re funny and, almost to a one, nobody has followed a traditional life path for a woman or for a non-man, because it’s very trans and [non-binary] inclusive.”

Adds McMahon: “The very things the play is about – resilience, community, finding your tribe and sitting with vulnerability and difficulty – and pushing through – is what derby is all about.”

While not every festival show gets a second season, that is already assured for Mama Does Derby.

While 30 skaters have been rehearsing in Sydney, another 30 have been rehearsing in Adelaide for a festival season there late next month. A Brisbane Festival season is also being discussed.

“Everywhere the show goes, we’ll work with local skaters,” Watson says.

Gay is staying in the stands rather than performing.

“There’s a reason I played Calamity Jane,” she says. “I get bruised standing in flat shoes so I cannot be on skates. I’ll kill myself.”

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.