For almost a decade now, my day job has largely focused on trying to obtain compensation for a cohort of mostly Iranian former asylum seekers for the psychiatric injuries they suffered in the notorious Woomera and Baxter Detention Centres. Those centres were in rural South Australia and as remote as the government of the day could make them. Eventually, they were closed, but replaced with the new horror of offshore centres on Nauru and Manus Island, and hotel rooms in capital cities. Beyond a core of well-meaning Australians, I have struggled to get people to care about my clients’ stories. And so it is refreshing to see an artist like Chloé Charody striving to find new and innovative ways to draw attention to the destruction that immigration detention centres do to people who have done nothing other than to flee persecution, and in some cases, certain torture and death. The ambitious Stories that Must be Heard consists of two separate shows melding acrobatics, opera and classical music. The common thread is that each tries to capture the asylum seeker experience. Truth in the Cage is a song cycle based on the poems of Manus Island detainee Mohammad Ali Maleki, written in detention as a means of preserving his sanity. A solo singer performs the songs to piano accompaniment while operating a circus swing and I was awestruck at the singer’s ability to fully control her vocals while swinging rapidly and upside down. Even more impressive is the cycle’s encapsulation of the emotional roller coaster of the detention experience, the trauma of the ocean voyage, the isolation, sense of abandonment and borderline madness. The second show, Limbo,is a violin sonata Charody has written for an asylum seeker who spent nine years detained in a hotel room. Acrobatic violinist Sonja Schebeck and acrobatic partner Josh Frazer (on unicycle) eloquently convey the loneliness of that harrowing experience. Once again, the technical prowess needed to play violin while perched on the shoulders of a man on one wheel was gobsmacking. It’s become fashionable again to vilify First Nations People, asylum seekers and anyone who doesn’t fit the old “Aussie” stereotype. It’s solace to see that amongst all this white noise, there are still right-minded artists speaking up for the voiceless.