Our take: Divine Playhouse controversy, men in childcare & The Odyssey

**Chris Spyrou** (0:07)
Hello, happy Saturday, Chris Spyrou with you. And look, normally, this is where we'd sit down with the humans behind the headlines for The Weekend Briefing, but not today. Today, we are launching something brand new that my co-host Sacha Barbour Gatt is thrilled to be a part of.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (0:22)
Oh no, I'm excited, this is gonna be fun.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:24)
Yes, it is just us, plus a few extras from around the business that we'll drag in along the way. Our ties are off, not that I wear a tie, no, how do you?

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (0:33)
You also scripted shoes off, but my shoes are firmly on my feet.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:36)
My shoes also, and I've got high tops on, so it's a bit of a journey to take them off.
But this is where we look back at The Week that was, and you know, all the things that we and you listening made of it. It's looser, it's chattier, it's a lot less serious, but all still factual. We are not just chattin mad.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:54)
Oh, I'm not going to go into that territory.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:56)
Okay, and the format of this episode is, you know, we've got our debrief where you and Isash, we unpack a story that we didn't get to during the week, something that we couldn't stop talking about all week long. Then it is our brand new weekend quiz. That is so fun. Then we take you inside our inbox where we read out your comments, DMs and emails. We even go through the broadcast channel prompts, which we, you know, we always talk about in headlines. And of course, because this is sitting on a Saturday, we're still going to do the weekend list where we recommend what to watch, see, do, eat and listen to, which I got in the right order because I wrote it down.
Okay. So let's kick things off with our debrief.
So look, what you heard there was audio from a protest or this prayer vigil that 60 to 70 Catholic people staged out the front of a venue in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. So the venue was called the Divine Playhouse. It was a queer led pop up arts and performance venue. And that was their opening night.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (2:10)
And the important thing here is that it was in a deconsecrated church. So this was a former church owned by the Catholic Archdiocese. It was deconsecrated way back in 1932 So it hasn't been a church for a very, very long time.
It has been used as a theater venue since then. The Catholic Archdiocese though, formally sold it in 2024 Now, Heaps Gay, which is a party and events group, was given 100 grand from the government, the New South Wales government, to support a four months art program at the venue. Now it was initially called the Unholy Playhouse. They renamed it to Divine Playhouse after some backlash from religious group. And that only continued on opening night. As we heard, there were 60 to 70 Catholic protesters opposing it. And the day after, the landlord issued a notice of breach saying it was engaging in offensive trade and it canceled its tenancy. So this is one that we didn't cover in headlines or in a deep dive. But you and I at our desks after going and getting our morning coffee had a debate about. You and I both chatted about what we thought about this story.
And we have opposing views. We are on different ends of the spectrum.

**Chris Spyrou** (3:18)
Yeah, because I think at least from my perspective, what was missing from this story and from a lot of the coverage of this story is why exactly it was being criticized. Early on, we were back and forthing over this de-consecration stuff. And I said, well, it's the venue itself. I don't take issue with that. It's kind of what was happening inside the venue that I take a bit more interest in and I can understand where the opposition is stemming from. Now, full transparency, I'm a practising Christian. I'm a practising Greek Orthodox man.
I just want to put that out on the record there.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:51)
Well, it's important context to this story.

**Chris Spyrou** (3:53)
Yeah, yeah, of course. But, I mean, what I want to say about it is I fully see the other side of things in the sense of people from the queer community saying this is a reclamation, this is a chance of reclaiming a space that has caused hurt traditionally to them fully.
When we see drag queens dressed as nuns waving sex toys, drag performances parodying the birth of Christ, performers dressed as pigs, distributing makish chips, you know, mocking Holy Communion. Like I do look at that and I'm not a sensitive Sally. Like I do see the humour in it. Like I can laugh at that. But those are the things that I see and I understand why Christians are up in arms and upset at what's gone down here.