CAMP: Play shares story of Australia's pioneering gay rights activists

CAMP will be at the Seymour Centre in Sydney from February 15-March 4.

Written by Elias Jamieson Brown, the play was inspired by stories from CAMP: Australia's pioneer homosexual rights activists, a book by Robyn Kennedy and Robyn Plaister which was released earlier this year.

The two Robyns were part of the group who became known as the 78ers, which gave birth to Australia's gay rights movement in the "punk lands" of the 1970s.

Robyn Kennedy said the play chronicled the struggles, successes and legacy of activists, who risked family, careers, and imprisonment to achieve social change.

It places special focus on the women whose roles in the Pride movement went largely unacknowledged.

"Women have been all but absent in published records of Pride history in Australia, which have invariably been told from a male perspective," Robyn said.

"It was lesbians who were in the vanguard of the women's movement, who nursed gay men in the AIDS ward at St Vincent's Hospital and set up women's refuges and rape crisis centres.

"It was lesbians who led the charge at the first Mardi Gras and who were targeted by police."

Director Kate Gaul said the play's season coincided with Sydney WorldPride and the production team anticipated a "huge response".

"CAMP is a story of murder, corruption, love and liberation, where past and present collide in a dramatised retelling of the 1970s events which led to the 1978 Mardi Gras," she said.

The production is sponsored by Sydney WorldPride, Qtopia Sydney, Create NSW, Sydney Council, LOTL (Lesbians On The Loose) media and the Star Observer. Tickets from $36.

For bookings click HERE. To sponsor the production and make a tax-deductible donation click HERE.