CAMPUS politics is well-known for having produced some of this country’s most cunning and devious politicians – best not name names.

Now Sydney writer Julian Larnach, a former student politician himself, has written “How To Vote”, a play for Canberra Youth Theatre involving up to 30 actors and an opportunity, he says, “to write a really big play about what happens when the system breaks apart”.

The plot centres on three candidates in a student election and follows through the electoral campaign, a process he hopes will have the audience in and out of their seats as they are both drawn in and forced to look objectively.

“It’s mostly a comedy about people taking themselves far too seriously and I hope the audience will be having fun,” he says. “It’s a satire and it’s got a very silly plotline with a lot of roles… it’s very silly and very big, but there’s a bit of nostalgia there, too, for a time when student life seemed simpler.”

Larnach, the literary associate at Griffin Theatre Company and formerly resident playwright at the Australian Theatre for Young People, knows the scene.

“I went from student politics to being a playwright,” he says. “I first got involved in student politics at the Sydney’s University newspaper ‘Honi Soit’ and was especially struck by the scheming that emerged when the SRC elections came around.”

Recently invited back to speak at the launch of the ‘Honi Soit’ essay competition, Larnach found it fascinating to be back at university, seeing people before they’ve made it, “on the cusp of becoming very important people”.

He sees parallels with theatre because, in student politics, he has noticed, “there’s a degree of acting… it’s a particular world where posters and T-shirts are suddenly very important”.

Once having been commissioned to write the play by Canberra Youth Theatre’s director, Luke Rogers, a relationship with the Museum of Australian Democracy began that culminated in an early reading in the Old Parliament House of Reps chamber.

“This experience was important to me… they took us on a guided tour around the place and we came to realise this place had been the endgame for a lot of people,” he says.

He also saw an exhibition about politician Cathy McGowan and the rise of independent candidates, raising the question of what happens if an independent-minded person gets interested in politics.

Larnach ended up volunteering for an independent candidate in the Federal election this year – “life becoming art and art becoming life,” he says.

Caitlin Baker, who plays Lizzie in the production, can vouch for its connection to real life. 

A regular with Canberra Youth Theatre since age 16, she’s now studying arts/law at the ANU where every morning as she walks down University Avenue, she sees people handing out pamphlets on all kinds of issues.

The events in “How To Vote”, she says, “are 110 per cent what goes on at the ANU”.

“We are surrounded by people who know how the government works and most of those people are going to go into government,” she says. 

“I have stayed away from student politics except when standing up for student theatre, but you can’t really escape when you’re on campus… if you’ve been to the ANU you can say: ‘I know that goes on here’.”

It’s a mixed-age cast, where they all get to work with more experienced actors such as Joanne Richards and Tracy Noble, instead of having kids pretend to be the older characters – it’s truer to life. 

Larnach’ s play, she says, has a core cast of named characters. Three of them are the candidates in the student elections, but as well there’s a massive “moving ensemble”, a huge group of young people aged 18 to 25 who make up students drinking at the uni bar, marching in demos and so on.

“I play Lizzie, one of the candidates,” she says, “I’m the progressive poster girl… the others are the single-issue candidate and the right-wing candidate – like somebody who belongs to the Young Liberals.

“At heart it’s a satire and there’s comedy in making fun of how big we make all these things. Why do we make student politics the biggest thing in the world?” 

“How To Vote!”, The Playhouse, September 7-10.