There is a quiet, unmistakable nostalgia that is evoked, as a second-generation migrant, in hearing your mother tongue spoken on stage. When that language is translated, braided seamlessly with two others, it becomes something rarer still. A trilingual play is at once a unique, technical feat, a trait that is becoming synonymous with Sydney Festival, and an overdue homage to the global workforce that has, for decades, been left publicly unacknowledged by the elite art industries they sustain.

It is these people who form the centrepiece of writer and director Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s three-hour drama, LACRIMA. Nguyen seems to be drawn to the world of threes: this three hour play, delivered in three languages – French, Tamil and English – follows craftsmen (and women) across three countries tasked with creating a secret, history-making dress.

Lacrima. Photo © Wendell Teodoro

Marion (Maud Le Grevellec), head seamstress of a Parisian textile workshop, who is enlisted by a British fashion designer (Vasanth Selvam) to make a wedding dress for a British princess. Through the deft use of onstage webcams, developed in collaboration with Jérémie Scheidler, Nguyen layers multiple...