Michael Mohammed Ahmad wanted to be an actor before he decided to become a writer.
The author is now known for his three semi-autobiographical novels (two of which were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin), and for founding literary movement Sweatshop, which is dedicated to helping other Western Sydney-based people of colour write authentically about their own lives.
But his career as a writer may have panned out differently if he hadn't gotten his "big break" and been inspired to change direction.
"My entrance into the TV and film world, in my pursuit to be a Hollywood movie star, was playing a Lebanese drug dealer," says Ahmad.
It was 2007. He had been cast in an episode of SBS series East West 101, as a dealer who is caught by police with drugs and becomes an informant. When he is caught spying by his gang, they shoot off his toe and throw him out of a car.
"He's such an insignificant character, you don't even see what happens to him after he's thrown on the curb," Ahmad says.
Ahmad's extended family had gathered in Western Sydney to watch the episode; afterwards, he recalls his cousin saying: "That was hectic, cuz. You were the lowest piece of s*** I've ever seen on TV."
The moment was an "epiphany" for the aspiring actor: he realised he needed to become a writer to take control of the narratives being told about his community.
He studied creative writing, gaining a PhD from Western Sydney University; in 2013, he founded Sweatshop.
"The works I make now are complex, sophisticated, three-dimensional stories about First Nations [peoples] and people of colour. That's what I'm interested in – both in my role as an editor and as a director of Sweatshop, and as a creator myself," says Ahmad.
He became the first Muslim person to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, for his second novel The Lebs (2018). He was up for the award again this year for his third novel, The Other Half of You, as part of the first shortlist to feature a majority of writers of colour.
In 2019, Ahmad won the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for The Lebs, and in September this year he won the Fiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards for The Other Half of You.
Now, the author turns his attention to the stage, with The Demon: a blend of narrative and physical theatre that connects the dots between contemporary racism, colonisation, and the massacre of Chinese miners at Burrangong in south-western NSW in 1860-1861.
Written by Ahmad and directed by Rachael Swain, with choreography by Gavin Webber, The Demon premiered at Sydney Opera House this week, before a season as part of OzAsia Festival in Adelaide.
It's an incredibly ambitious work — and one that was 10 years in the making.
Co-creators not consultants
When Ahmad was making his start in theatre in the early 00s, the scene was dominated by white writers and directors. He says he was often hired as a community consultant, whose role was to "correct all of their ignorant statements".
In taking on those roles, he was accused of "selling out" his community, he says.
"My Arab and Muslim peers used to call me a backstabber, a dog, a traitor, self-hating … because I was always happy to sell myself out. I did a lot of pandering to the white gaze," he says.
Ahmad was inspired to take a more active role in the theatre. In 2012, he starred in Roslyn Oades's I'm Your Man at Belvoir. In 2015, he co-adapted (with director Janice Muller) his first novel The Tribe (2014) for Sydney Festival. He turned the book into a one-man show, starring Hazem Shammas and performed in backyards in Bankstown (and then in 2016, for Belvoir, in Surry Hills backyards). Then, for Sydney Festival in 2019, he was the script editor for Sex, Drugs and Pork Rolls, which had a creative team made up of only people of colour.
In The Demon, he explores the violence enacted against First Nations peoples since colonisation, Asian migrants during the Lambing Flat riots of 1861, and Muslim Australians since 9/11.
His co-creators are director Rachael Swain (co-artistic director of Indigenous intercultural dance company Marrugeku), and choreographer Gavin Webber (artistic director of Queensland contemporary dance company The Farm).
Ahmad also brought on board two co-writers, who he had worked with through Sweatshop: Wiradjuri writer Samantha Hogg and Chinese Australian writer Janette Chen.
"I felt very confident about portraying and representing the Arab Australian characters and the Muslim Australian content. But I felt that the First Nations content and the Chinese Australian content needed writers from that community," he says.
He is committed to making work that engages people of different backgrounds as co-creators, not consultants.
"Work that represents communities needs to be produced on every level with us," he says.
A 10-year journey
The process of making The Demon began in the mid-00s when New Zealand-born director Rachael Swain and Chinese Australian filmmaker Tony Ayres decided they wanted to make a work about the violence perpetrated against Chinese people in Australia during the Gold Rush in the 1860s.
But they struggled to come up with a narrative that wasn't simply a work of history, and parked the idea.
"The idea of the violence at Burrangong and the implications of what happened there for our contemporary reality never really left me," says Swain.
In 1861, between 2,000 and 3,000 white settlers marched into Burrangong and attacked Chinese miners, which led to the state's Chinese Restriction Act – a predecessor to the federal White Australia policy.
"The White Australia policy continued into the early 70s. We're still living with the legacy of that period," says Swain.
"I started to think about it [The Demon] as a contemporary work that's actually really addressing the time now, but had flashbacks to that period [of the 1860s]. And I wanted it to be a surrealist thriller, so that it had an accessible way of approaching that history."
In The Demon, two Western Sydney detectives, the Arab Australian Jihad (Johnny Nasser) and Aboriginal Muslim Muhammad (Kirk Page), follow Chinese Australian street fighter Wei (Yvonne Huang) to Burrangong, following a violent crime.
In Burrangong, she intends to bury a gold nugget — which Jihad considers as evidence. But the gold has a deeper significance — it is a symbol of the 'demon' of racism. The Demon is made literal (played by Joshua Thomson), engaging in precisely choreographed fights with the characters or performing aerial acrobatics as his unseen presence haunts a scene.
Swain picked the project back up in 2012 when she asked Chris Mead, then-artistic director of Playwriting Australia, to recommend a playwright for her to collaborate with – and he suggested Michael Mohammed Ahmad.
At the time, Ahmad was chief editor of Westside Publications at Bankstown Arts Centre – a precursor to his work at Sweatshop.
He says: "When she contacted me about writing this show, I hadn't written any of my novels yet. I hadn't started my doctorate. And Sweatshop didn't exist … I was a kid starting off."
Over the last decade, Ahmad says, he became capable of telling this story, having learned how to capture the reality of living in Western Sydney, including its cultural and linguistic diversity, and sometimes-confronting vernacular.
"I've basically become an artist over the last 10 years … It [writing The Demon] wasn't something I could actually do in 2012," says Ahmad.
To create the work, Swain drew upon the intercultural practice that she uses at the Broome-based contemporary dance company Marrugeku, where she is co-artistic director with Yawuru/Bardi choreographer Dalisa Pigram.
Marrugeku brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, from both urban and remote communities, to collaborate.
"Coming out of 27 years of intercultural collaboration, it is part of my ethos and the way I know how to work," says Swain.
Over a series of developments, Ahmad and Swain came up with the narrative, and decided it should combine social realism with the tropes of film noir and surrealist thrillers, such as flashbacks, dream sequences and voiceovers.
Swain says: "I've always felt that a kind of horrific surrealism is an important storytelling form for Australian narratives and that we need to understand the forces that drive us as a nation as forces in our psyche. And we need to understand them as a kind of surrealism."
She also brought on choreographer Gavin Webber as another co-creator, who worked with the team on the dance and physical theatre elements, including aerial stunt work.
"You can use dance and physical theatre and stunt work to contribute to moving between social realism and magic realism," says Swain.
"Using these physical languages, you're literally heightening the space that the performers occupy and how they can travel and how they can be present and claim the space … Giving The Demon these wire scenes amplifies the horrific surrealism that he [The Demon] brings to the work."
Burying the demon
The themes of The Demon seemed to grow in resonance as the development process continued.
In the last three years alone, racism against Asian Australians increased over the course of the pandemic; an Australian man murdered 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, with Islamophobic attacks rising in Australia in the years since; and the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia drew renewed attention to Aboriginal deaths in custody.
"The issues that we're tapping into have been there constantly. [Recently] they've intensified and they've become much more present in the public's eye," Swain says.
Ahmad adds: "We're not talking about burying an ancient curse. We're talking about burying a curse that still exists, and that still keeps repeating itself and manifesting itself."
The Christchurch massacre in particular affected the author and playwright deeply. Ahmad recalls that Swain, who grew up in Christchurch, was a great support to him during that time.
"[I felt] a sense of failure [after Christchurch] … I felt very broken and very confused. And Rachael [Swain] was a really good friend during that time and gave me a platform to articulate some of that pain through the work."
Ahmad felt he had failed to redress negative stereotypes about his community through his work — and to, in turn, prevent acts of violence like Christchurch.
"I have no doubt that the Christchurch massacre happened because of the climate of xenophobia and Islamophobia that had been fostered by the media and by politicians," he says.
He points to anti-Muslim rhetoric – such as Peter Dutton saying in 2016 that it was a "mistake" to allow Lebanese Muslim people to immigrate to Australia in the 70s – as having contributed to negative perceptions of Muslim Australians.
"I became an artist because I wanted to use my platform to counteract that language and that dehumanisation," he says.
The way to "bury the demon" in real life, says Ahmad, is through solidarity – with people of different backgrounds coming together to make change.
"It's about standing together to recognise what this kind of work is saying, and supporting the artists who want to tell these stories, and then using that art to change the way we think and feel about our reality."
The Demon runs until October 15 at Sydney Opera House; and from October 20-22 at OzAsia Festival in Adelaide.
