Announcing "THE WAR ROOM"

New Play Explores Creativity Under Pressure, and First Contact

Presidential Productions is proud to announce the premiere of THE WAR ROOM, an ambitious new stage play written by Australian filmmaker and playwright James Cunningham. Debuting at Perth’s Fringe World Festival in 2017, the production invites audiences into a sharply drawn, high-intensity world where creativity, ego and speculation about humanity’s future collide.

Set entirely within a sealed creative bunker, THE WAR ROOM follows four young Hollywood-style screenwriters tasked with crafting the most realistic cinematic portrayal of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life. With studio pressure mounting outside the door, the writers must navigate clashing personalities, competing visions, and the enormous philosophical weight of imagining how the human race should respond to a cosmic arrival.

Cunningham’s script blends dark humour, heated artistic friction, cinematic references and big-picture ideas about pop culture, world politics, mythology, and the role of storytelling in shaping collective understanding. The play asks: What happens when the people responsible for shaping the narrative of first contact find themselves unravelling? Is creativity a weapon, a salvation, or merely a performance under the glare of expectation?

Staged 'in the round' at Yogahub Studio Mt Hawthorn, THE WAR ROOM immerses the audience inside the pressure cooker. With spectators observing the action from all sides, the production strips away theatrical distance and places its viewers in the thick of the writers’ escalating struggle. This 360-degree staging brings an immediacy that mirrors the claustrophobia and urgency within the story.

The talented Perth ensemble — Daniel Moxham, John Gray, Ellis Kinnear, and Leia Mizerski — brings both intensity and nuance to the emotionally charged script, each portraying a writer whose hopes, anxieties, and creative impulses threaten to either elevate or derail the mission.

THE WAR ROOM promises a thrilling evening of theatre that blends science-fiction speculation with human vulnerability. With its tight structure, rapid-fire dialogue, and philosophical undercurrents, it continues Presidential Productions’ commitment to original Australian works that challenge, provoke, and entertain.

Information, tickets and further details are available through the Fringe World program and Presidential Productions.