The roller derby skater Maddy \u201cBB Gun\u201d Wilkinson has speed and scale on her side. The 24-year-old jammer (primary point-scorer) for the Adelaide team the Wild Hearses is 156cm tall (\u201cI push just 5\u2019 1\u201d, maybe\u201d) and easily weaves between small gaps left by the opposing team, shielded by taller teammates from the scanning eyes of their rivals.<\/p>\n
Wilkinson is fast too, and fearless, darting out to knock an opponent off balance \u2013 although she has never forgotten the time she broke her collarbone competing in junior league. \u201cDefinitely no punching or kicking people\u2019s feet out,\u201d she insists. \u201cI use my shoulders a lot: shoulders, hips, the side of the body are all legal zones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maddy \u2018BB Gun\u2019 Wilkinson is bringing her skates and skills to Sydney town hall in January as part of mother-daughter comedy Mama Does Derby. Photograph: Claudio Raschella\/Windmill<\/p>\n
Competitive roller derby began in Australia in 2007, with leagues springing up in Adelaide and Melbourne. These days there are more than 80 men\u2019s, women\u2019s, mixed and junior leagues across Australia. Players take theatrical names such as Bionic Mayhem, Frill Seeker and Judge Juicy, painting their faces in individual masks.<\/p>\n
The bodies, sexualities and identities are diverse: one team, the Salty Dolls, renamed themselves the Salties to acknowledge their non-binary identifying players. Roller derby<\/a> was \u201cpromoted to be a women\u2019s community so women had something they could do together\u201d, Wilkinson says. \u201cBut through that, we have a massive community of queer skaters, and it\u2019s important they feel comfortable, confident and safe to be themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten experienced roller derby competitors will skate on a full-scale rink in the show. Photograph: Bri Hammond\/Windmill<\/p>\n This summer Wilkinson can be seen skating in Sydney town hall<\/a> and the Adelaide Entertainment Centre theatre<\/a> for the high-energy play Mama Does Derby<\/a>, co-created by its director, Clare Watson, and writer, Virginia Gay, at Sydney and Adelaide festivals. Inspired by Watson\u2019s story, the play is about a single mother whose chaotic energy leads her to join a roller derby team while trying to connect with her 16-year-old daughter, the responsible one of the pair.<\/p>\n Each performance will feature 10 players (two teams of five) in choreographed sequences, moving the set and prop pieces around the actors \u2013 in the case of Sydney, skating and acting in the round in a takeover of the city\u2019s 137-year-old town hall, where a full-scale, custom-built oval track and a central stage with scenery will have been wheeled in.<\/p>\n The theatre-makers are mindful of the hall\u2019s precious Tasmanian blackwood and tallowwood floor beneath the track, as well as the famed 25-metre-wide grand organ at one end. \u201cYeah, don\u2019t touch the pipe organ,\u201d Watson says, laughing. \u201cAnd we must take care of the stunning parquetry floor.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilkinson has been skating since the age of six, when her dad bought her a beat-up pair of roller-skates at a garage sale. After father and daughter went to their first roller derby \u201cbout\u201d together in 2008, Wilkinson was hooked.<\/p>\n She\u2019s been part of the Wild Hearses since 2023, taking the name BB Gun in honour of her mentor: the late Sarah Strong-Law AKA Barrelhouse Bessy, the Texas-born founder of the sport in Adelaide, who was killed in a road accident in 2022.<\/p>\n Mama Does Derby\u2019s director Clare Watson and playwright Virginia Gay. Photograph: Claudio Raschella\/Windmill<\/p>\n Like the character loosely based on her in Mama Does Derby, Watson came to roller derby later in life and saw the \u201clegendary\u201d Strong-Law compete in the first bout she attended: at Puckhandlers rink in north-east Melbourne in 2008. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be doing this show without Sarah, she\u2019s in the fabric of everything we\u2019re doing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Recalling that first encounter with roller derby, Watson says: \u201cThe stakes were so high. The athleticism, the strength, the power, the agility, also the theatre of the thing, their sense of character as performers.\u201d<\/p>\n She signed up for beginners training with the Victorian Roller Derby League, bringing along her six-year-old daughter, Ivy. They watched bouts together too, and Watson was surprised \u2013 never having been a sports barracker \u2013 to find herself \u201cholding a can of VB over my head and yelling encouragement and obscenities\u201d.<\/p>\n But one day the mother and daughter witnessed an accident that frightened Watson. \u201cSomebody wearing all their safety gear went down,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey were unconscious for a long time, and the ambulance took them away. It turns out that they had broken their cheekbone; their eye socket was basically broken.\u201d<\/p>\n The episode scared Watson off advancing to competition; she decided to transfer her love of roller derby to the stage instead. She pitched the story to the playwright and actor Gay<\/a>, her longtime collaborator.<\/p>\n Initially Gay said no: she had never been on roller-skates, and still hasn\u2019t. \u201c[I\u2019d] never seen a game of roller derby and I don\u2019t have kids,\u201d she tells me. But Watson won her over: Gay loves innovative theatre, after all, and she\u2019s known Ivy since she was little.<\/p>\n Gay and Maddie Wilkinson with skaters. Photograph: Claudio Raschella\/Windmill<\/p>\n As research, Gay went to roller derby bouts and training, and interviewed athletes. She created the characters of Maxine, played by Amber McMahon, and her 16-year-old daughter, Billie (Elvy-Lee Quici). Maxine falls in love with the sport (she competes as \u201cMad Max\u201d) but Billie is uninterested \u2013 she\u2019s more invested in car wheels than skates, eyeing a driver\u2019s licence.<\/p>\n Watson\u2019s daughter Ivy is a script consultant and, although the play isn\u2019t directly biographical, Gay says the pair \u201cenergetically defended their avatars on stage and fought for what is important for them\u201d. While the show explores body and sexuality and gender diversity, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t point at them too hard,\u201d Gay says. Does Billie identify as queer? \u201cWell, I don\u2019t think she uses that phrase but that is certainly something that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n