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How Emmanuelle Mattana's Trophy Boys exploded from independent theatre to national tours and NYC off-Broadway
"It's bonkers," Sydney-born playwright and actor Emmanuelle Mattana says.
We're sitting on a velvet banquette in the underground foyer of Melbourne's Hamer Hall, discussing the fact that her play, Trophy Boys, will open in August at the off-Broadway MCC Theatre in New York.
The play explores the dark side of male privilege and power through Mattana's queer, satirical lens. It looks at how power and privilege emerge and are cultivated and defended in boys through our institutions and culture more broadly.
To say those themes have resonated would be an understatement.
Since its first performance at Melbourne's La Mama Theatre in 2022, Trophy Boys has been restaged at Melbourne's fortyfivedownstairs, garnered rave reviews, had a national tour, been nominated for four Green Room Awards, and won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Work in 2024.
It's all the more impressive when you consider Mattana began writing the play, her debut, in which she also starred, in 2021, when she was just 20 years old.
Set on the eve of elite all-boys school St Imperium's inter-school debating final, Trophy Boys unfolds in real time as four boys prepare for their debate against their sister school.
But there are two big twists, Mattana tells ABC Arts. "One is that all the boys are played by female and non-binary performers in drag. The other is they are asked to argue that feminism has failed women."
The topic sends the boys into a tailspin, threatening to shine an uncomfortable light on the hypocrisy behind their self-declared feminist views.
"I'm interested in having a conversation about how masculinity is the performance and how especially young boys are taught how to perform it," Mattana says.
That the show deals with serious topics, like sexual violence, in a satirical way is a balancing act, she says.
"These things are really confronting, really full on. But there's a sort of wink-wink we get to do to the audience that says, 'You're safe here — this is your opportunity to laugh at the people who have done terrible things.' I think that's been really fun — it's a joy to be able to send up awful boys."
Mattana began writing Trophy Boys after the historical rape allegations against former Australian attorney-general Christian Porter (which Porter denies) made headlines in 2021, pertaining to a sexual assault at an inter-school debating competition in the late-1980s.
This led Mattana to reflect on her own experience as a school debater (where she first met Trophy Boys director Marni Mount), and how cultural events such as debating often intersect with privilege and societal power.
"Marni and I often joked that we probably knew the future prime minister because of what we did, before realising that it maybe wasn't a very funny joke. The people we know and the things we do are this direct pipeline to power in a really tangible way," she says.
Trophy Boys opened at Melbourne Arts Centre in 2024 as part of its national tour, hot on the heels of another scandal; revelations about sexist behaviour at Yarra Valley Grammar, "where boys had a spreadsheet and they talked about unrapable women," Mattana says.
"Thank you so much for keeping my writing relevant," she says with her tongue firmly in cheek.
As she prepares to head to New York to rework Trophy Boys for a US audience, Mattana says that, while she'd hoped otherwise, things seem to have changed for the worse.
"I wrote the play about boys who, even though they held these sorts of deeply misogynistic views, knew all the right things to say. They would pretend to be feminist and woke. Now I think men more than ever are feeling emboldened and that they don't even have to put on the act anymore.
"It was so bold of me to think that misogyny was just going to disappear."
Since its independent theatre beginnings as part of La Mama's exploration season, Trophy Boys has been performed across Australia to a broad range of audiences.
"But one of the best things was getting it included in the Victorian curriculum," Mattana says.
Its inclusion in 2024, and special performances for school groups, has already sparked frank and fruitful conversations with teenagers, teachers, parents and cast members about the ways misogyny perpetuates sexual abuse and violence in this country.
Mothers, especially, have asked Mattana for advice about how to debrief after the play with their sons.
"It's been the mums' and kids' show," she says, proudly.
The success of the play's 2024 national Australian tour caught the attention of director and producer Amy Marie Haven - the creative development manager of Michael Cassel Group. Haven will produce its forthcoming season at the MCC Theatre in New York. It will be directed by Tony-Award-winning director Danya Taymor.
As well as helping adapt the show for an American audience, Mattana will reprise her role as teenage brainiac Owen alongside an all-new cast of performers, including non-binary and trans actors.
"For me, it's really an exercise in finding out what is culturally the same between Australia and the US and what is different," she says.
"With the sort of climate we're in now and what's happening in the US, especially to queer and trans young people, I'm hoping the show can be a sort of battle cry."
With Mattana in New York, non-binary actor and writer Myfanwy Hocking has been cast in the role of Owen for the forthcoming Australian tour, directed by Mattana's longtime collaborator, Marni Mount.
It's yet another sign that Mattana's show, and its influence, is ready to grow and adapt to the times.
"On the one hand, I'm devastated to be saying goodbye to my little baby," Mattana says, smiling ruefully.
"But I'm so excited that other people get to step into those school shoes."
Trophy Boys will tour to Sydney's Carriageworks (July 23 - August 3) and Riverside Theatres (August 6-9), Arts Centre Melbourne (August 12-24) and Brisbane's QPAC (August 25-30).
