No Strings Attached (NSA) creates original theatre through the unique perspectives of our disabled performers. "Sons & Mothers" was written and directed by Alirio Zavarce in collaboration with six performers from the NSA Men’s Ensemble workshop. "Sons & Mothers"  has become a runaway hit, moving audiences through two sold-out seasons in Adelaide. Now we want to share it with regional audiences all over Australia.

Award-winning director Alirio Zavarce has been a tutor with NSA’s Men’s Ensemble for many years. Late in 2004, his mother became ill and Alirio took leave to visit her in Venezuela. When he returned from her funeral in 2005, the men in the workshop crowded around him in shared grief. The idea for Sons & Mothers was born.


Sons & Mothers Preview from No Strings Attached Theatre on Vimeo.

This love letter to Mums took five years to gestate (2005-2009), two years to develop (2010-2011) and two weeks to perform (2012).

In those two short performance weeks, Sons & Mothers became the buzz of the 2012 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Five-star reviews and viral word of mouth led to sold-out houses. In a Fringe that included over 4,000 artists, 923 events and 6,532 performances, Sons & Mothers took out three top awards, including ‘Best Theatre Production’ and ‘Best in the Fringe’.

In October 2013, Windmill Theatre and the Adelaide Festival Centre co-presented Sons & Mothers in the Festival Centre Space Theatre. The result was another sold-out season.

Now Performing Lines is presenting Sons & Mothers to regional audiences around Australia, starting with three performances at the 2014 Darwin Festival.

“Eloquent and tender...beautifully crafted” The Advertiser

Sons & Mothers cast from L-R: Ricky Samai, Ben Wishart, Duncan Luke, Ryan Rowland, Kym Mackenzie, Damien Turbin and Alirio Zavarce. 


Swelling with heart and humour, six sons tell stories of their mothers as they recount their lives from birth to adulthood, with stumbles and triumphs along the way. These are love stories, and they’re made all the more potent because of the disabilities the men live with and their humbling takes on discriminations they’ve faced.

Sons & Mothers is a rich and moving tribute to the bravery of mothers. It’s quality drama that comes from the heart.

Of the Sons involved, two live at home with their mothers, two live independently but rely on their mothers, and two have lost their mothers. The Sons – Kym Mackenzie, Duncan Luke, Ryan Rowland, Richard Samai, Damien Turbin and Ben Wishart – create intimate and authentic portraits of their experiences with their mothers. We meet the Mothers and hear their stories via filmed interviews incorporated into the production.

Separate from the play, Adelaide production company POP Pictures filmed the entire process of developing Sons & Mothers, from the first workshop through opening night. Their feature documentary (also titled SONS & Mothers) premiered in October 2013 at the Adelaide Film Festival. POP’s film is an intimate look into the highs and lows of unconditional love. It also reveals the discipline, delights and difficulties of creating a play with disabled performers.

The film will be shown in many of the towns to which the play is touring. For a complete list CLICK HERE:

Sons & Mothers Production Team 

Written, Devised and Directed by Alirio Zavarce with and for the Men’s Ensemble of No Strings Attached

The Sons on stage
Duncan Luke, Kym Mackenzie, Ryan Rowland, Ricky Samai, Damien Turbin, Ben Wishart, Alirio Zavarce

The Mothers on film
Rosemary Luke, Margaret Mackenzie, Sharn Rowland, Rosella Samai, June Turbin, Jill Wishart, Alicia Zavarce

Set & Costumes   Kathryn Sproul
Lighting Design David Gadsden
Video Design Eugenia Lim
Sound Design Mario Spate
Movement Aidan Munn
Producer PJ Rose

Support Workers 
Monday McGill, Greg Gamlin and Deborah Barnes. 

No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability Sons & Mothers will touch anyone who’s ever had a mother, and we’re eager to take the production to regional audiences. But touring is expensive for everyone, and it’s even more expensive when the actors are disabled.

The touring entourage of 13 includes seven Sons on stage, one Mother off stage, three Support Workers back stage, plus Stage Manager, Production Manager and the planes, trains, cars and vans hired to get them all where they need to be. Sons & Mothers tour expenses include additional salaries, travel and accommodation for four more people than would tour with a non-disabled cast.

No Strings Attached has agreed to contribute $12,500 toward overall touring costs. By doing so, we were able to guarantee that the first tour performances would be at the 2014 Darwin Festival - a great place to kick off a national tour as well as a valuable addition to the fabulous Darwin Festival program.

Funds raised will be used to cover the extra time it takes -- and the extra money it costs -- to travel with three Support Workers and one Mother (24/7) for almost nine weeks. (A bargain at twice the price!) The Mother (June Turbin) is travelling with her Son Damien to deal with challenging medical issues should they arise. Without June’s support, Damien would not be able to tour at all. Now 29, Damien’s first-ever plane ride is on this tour. Without Support Workers … well we’d be lost without Support Workers.

Tour Dates
Darwin Festival
14-15 August 2014

Mandurah Performing Arts Centre
20 August 2014

Goldfields Arts Centre
27 August 2014

The Arts Centre Gold Coast
9 September 2014

The Q - Queanbeyan Arts Centre
13 September 2014

Wagga Civic Centre
17 September 2014

Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre
20 September 2014

Orange Civic Theatre
24 September 2014

Bathurst Memorial Arts Centre
27 September 2014

Theatre Royal (Hobart)
03-04 October 2014

The Capital
08 October 2014

Portland Arts Centre
11 October 2014

The Chaffey Theatre Renmark, SA
18 October 2014

Northern Festival Centre, York Peninsula, SA.
22 October 2014


This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. SA Government support for No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability is provided via Arts SA and the Department for Communities & Social Inclusion, and of course our touring producers Performing Lines and the Roadworks Consortium. 

Artistic Challenges

The challenge and the ‘art’ of working with variously-abled artists is to develop appropriate stage languages that tell stories in ways congruent with the tellers. That’s why we collaborate with theatre artists who delight in discovering and developing these ‘ways’, professional artists who recognise the creative spark in NSA performers and start to burn with it themselves.

To this end, NSA facilitates both recreational and professional programs. When it becomes clear that a participant has more serious interests in the performing arts, NSA creates specialised projects and workshops. Out of these special projects, full productions are born. The award-winning Sons & Mothers is a perfect example.

When NSA participants become performers on the public stage, they are paid as the professionals they’ve become.

20% of Australians live with a disability, 40% are affected by disability. Yet the lived experience of disability appears in perhaps 1% of contemporary theatre and film. When it does, roles for disabled characters are often cast with non-disabled actors.

NSA brings diversity to Australian theatre by putting the humanity of disability centre stage and by providing professional work for disabled artists. The more often professionally trained disabled artists get work, the more often disability culture is authentically reflected on stage, and the unique perspectives of NSA artists add new vocabularies to the physical and contextual languages of contemporary performance in Australia.

Tour Challenges

Our performers have impairments -- some impairments are medical, some intellectual, some psychiatric. Our performers are not disabled by their impairments; they are disabled by cultural and social environments that do not provide universal access.

They are also disabled by funding environments that do not understand that skilled Support Workers are as essential to the success of disability arts organisations as skilled Directors, Designers and Technicians are.

This is the first time we have taken this large a group of performers on such an extended tour (17 performances at 15 venues over 9 weeks). It’s a risky but crucial experiment for us (just as the original production was). In terms of the performers’ abilities to survive on the road, we’re hoping we’ll be as delightfully surprised by the outcomes of this tour as we were by the foot stomping standing ovations the play received when it opened.

Now that we’re confident of the power of the production, we must support the performers’ work on stage with the best possible environments off stage and the best possible working conditions for their Support Workers.

Please help us do that.