Image by Clare Hawley
In a world premier, Justin Fleming connects Adolf Hitler and Richard Wagner across time through a love of art and opera. Asking the tough questions about want, creation, and responsibility, DRESDEN seeks to complicate the way we interpret both small moments and their influence on the large names of our history.
Based on Eimear McBride’s 2013 novel of the same name, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is a brutal and unrelenting portrayal of the life of a young Irish woman from before her birth into her early 20s. Seeming to move from trauma to trauma and diving deep into the horrors of poverty, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, illness and death, the protagonist understandably struggles to understand herself through the lenses that the surrounding world imposes on her.
Two sisters in Sydney’s western suburbs grow up together, teaching each other about how to love themselves, connect with others, and understand the world around them. After a medical scare, older sister Christa hatches the perfect plan to help younger Jamie overcome her mental health issues and hermit-like lifestyle but, like a lot of sibling interactions, she realises she’s gone much too far. This debut production for Pip & Han Inc. shows us how love can steer you so wrong.
Charles O’Grady’s third original play makes a return to the stage at Kings Cross Theatre as part of Sydney’s 2018 Mardi Gras. Are We Awake? details a crucial morning in the lives of Endymion (Mathew Lee) and Hypnos (Daniel Monks) as they navigate the complexities of their relationship. O’Grady’s script is a well-balanced one which flows smoothly between the joy, desire, frustration, anger, and (dis)comfort of contemporary queerness, disability, love, and external practicalities. It’s a balance placed in the safe hands of director Sarah Hadley who adds a delicate direction to the two-hander.
Night Writes 