What happens after a day of violence Chris Drummond and Bryony Lavery are the makers of the play Thursday, based on the experiences of Gill Hicks. Picture: Kelly Barnes Source: The Australian IN early January, a Thursday, Gill Hicks gave birth to Amelie Falzon, a much-wanted baby girl. The significance of the baby's arrival on a Thursday was not lost on the Adelaide resident, given the 2005 terrorist attack that changed her life also occurred on the same day of the week. The first major show based on her experiences in the London bombings on July 7, 2005, makes its world premiere at the Adelaide Festival tonight. It is simply titled Thursday. "For me, it's the randomness of the day, it could be any day, but it's Thursday," says Hicks, who lives in Adelaide with her partner Karl Falzon. I like the idea also of the revolving nature of the days of the week: Thursday will come around again and again and nothing remarkable may happen, or by chance, yes, my daughter gets born on a Thursday. Those who have met Hicks - who have seen her glow as she enters a room; felt the serenity that surrounds her - would appreciate the significance of her giving life to a child, given the choice she made to live while lying in a train carriage trapped underground after being critically injured in the suicide bombing. "My experience has been centred around the brilliance of humanity - how so many risked their own lives to save others - indeed how I, known only as 'one unknown, estimated female', was saved by so many courageous medics, police and volunteers," she says. It didn't matter what the colour of my skin was, what nationality, religion - even without an identity, I was valued as a precious life. Hicks is the glue that binds the story, which is told through the eyes of protagonist Rose. British playwright Bryony Lavery from the English Touring Theatre was tasked with creating a character similar to, but not identical to, Hicks. "The problem with telling a real person's story is that a human being is infinitely wonderful, and if you're Gill Hicks they're infinitely, infinitely wonderful, and if you're trying to make her a character on stage you reduce her," Lavery says. We tried to step to the side. It is someone who has a terrible accident, but it's also seven or eight other people's stories. We're trying to present Gill's view of life, which is of strangers - strangers who showed unconditional love - and our story is about strangers who are or who are not connected. In Thursday, as Hicks has done, Rose sees herself as a survivor rather than a victim. Through her will to survive after the terrorist attack and her battle to walk on prosthetic legs, Hicks has become the public face of a campaign for peace. On the morning of the blast she had been running late after spending too much time at home looking for a scarf to wear and annoying her then partner, Joe Kerr. It was the morning after they had had a raging fight and Hicks had considered leaving him. Catching the Piccadilly line at London's Kings Cross tube station at a different time than usual, she sat near 19-year-old Germaine Lindsay. Lindsay blew himself up. Plunged into darkness and knowing she was seriously injured, Hicks considered giving up. "I was exploring both options: how beautiful death and the idea of death was," Hicks says. She chose life and used her scarf as a tourniquet until rescue workers arrived. Hicks has since stayed in touch with those workers and their relationships have been woven into Thursday. The production is an international collaboration between the ETT and Australian company Brink. Adelaide-based director Chris Drummond came up with the original idea after seeing Hicks with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope in 2007. "She was stripped of her identity and even her gender," Drummond says. It was a human life and the rescuers risked theirs to save her. I thought this wasn't about the geopolitics of terrorism. It was about who we are when we are ripped apart. He found Hicks through MAD for Peace, the international organisation Hicks set up to foster the resolve to avoid extreme forms of conflict. Drummond did not think he would be able to capture the essence of the story from Adelaide, despite Hicks having grown up there. He then contacted Lavery and the co-production was born. Drummond travelled to London to meet the playwright and the process began with improvisation. The pair came up with eight central characters related to the incident, set in a city not identified as London but clearly so. Lavery, being a Londoner, remembers July 7 well. "9/11 was about Americans, but the London underground is so cosmopolitan it is attached to the whole world," she says. Lavery is a tube traveller and her city is close to her heart. She had also wanted to work with Drummond for some time. It's odd that someone from Australia - there's something profound about that - comes all the way across the world and says: 'Would you like to do this project about the city you love?' The pair have been touched by Hicks. She is a woman of forgiveness who harbours no ill feeling. Hicks's marriage to Kerr failed. But Lavery and Drummond say she has a palpable sense of love. "When she talks about what she's been through I find that in conversation her optimism and her sense of compassion feel hard won," Drummond says. Hicks is moving on slowly. Thrilled to have become a mother, it is another new identity for her. She does not talk about recovery as others do after accidents. She knows hers is a long road. "I will never recover, I will never be whole again, so I have had to learn to adapt, adjust, and accept each new physical challenge, and change in my mobility and body," she says. So in a sense there is no 'moving on'. However, I have acknowledged that my life is different now and so I have embraced the new. For Hicks, Thursday is another step forward: it is about recognising humanity and capturing relationships between strangers. And it is of a piece with her establishment of the not-for-profit MAD for Peace. "I have been able to work towards the promise of my vow: that if I survived I would dedicate my life to making a positive difference," she says. Thursday opens tonight at Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide, as part of the Adelaide Festival.