Who Cares is an intimate, one-woman theatre work that uses humour, compassion, remorse and pride to illuminate the contradictory moments of caring for another person inside your own home. Written and performed by Hobart artist Helen Swain, the play combines autobiographical, fictional and verbatim dialogue.

Helen Swain has had a diverse career, dividing her working life between her great loves of theatre, writing and teaching. Her teaching has included high-school English and drama and, more recently, community work with English language skills for migrant and refugee students at TAFE Tasmania.  Helen studied drama at the Tasmanian State Institute of Technology (UTAS) in Launceston and later toured extracts of Shakespearean plays to schools in Tasmania with Azulykit Theatre. She worked in community theatre for 10 years in Wollongong with Women’s Business, a multicultural group using theatre, story-telling, music and art to explore the experience of coming to and living in Australia.  Since retiring from teaching she has won a number of national awards for her poetry including the 2018 Fellowship of Australian Writers Jean Stone Biennial Award for Poetry and the 2016 Society of Women Writers (Tasmania) Award.  Helen combines her delight in performance, poetry and cooking through her show Tart Words which she has performed in Hobart, Launceston and regional Tasmania. In it, she performs her poetry, chats and feeds her audience. She has been an invited reader at various venues in Hobart, including Seasonal Poets at Hadley’s Hotel, and is one of the conveners for Oasis, a series of women’s monthly poetry workshops. She has also  been invited to perform improvisational work in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney as well as Tanzfabric in Berlin and Le Crocodile Studio in Paris.

CREATIVE TEAM
Writer & Performer: Helen Swain
Dramaturg: Peter Matheson
Director: Carrie McLean

Who Cares was seeded at the 2018 Tasmania Performs Artist Residency at Tarraleah

Who Cares is supported by the City of Hobart