Anna is 18 and, while she hasn’t gone to uni or really figured out a plan at all, she wants to take control of her life. Part of this includes no longer taking the medication she’s been on for her entire adolescence in order to reclaim an earlier, more authentic version of herself. This isn’t a decision just for her, though, as a new boyfriend, her mother, and her long-term psychiatrist complicate the practicalities of mental health and being unwell.
Tag / theatre
Hotel Sorrento | HIT Productions with Riverside Theatre
Image by Cathy Ronalds
Three sisters’ lives recollide after middle sister Meg’s novel is nominated for the Book Prize. With the death of their father and the questioning of Hilary’s son Troy, the sisters are forced to re-examine the life they lived in hometown Sorrento and what drove them apart. This is a piece of nostalgic Australiana from our recent history that attempts to unpack the Australian identity in a global culture.
You’ve Got Mail | Bondi Feast
Against a pixellated Manhattan skyline at sunset (the perfect backdrop for an Internet seduction) Joe Fox and Meg Ryan talk and flirt to escape their meat-puppet bodies. It’s a modern love story: two people fall in love anonymously online without knowing that, in real life, they are rival bookshop owners. In Ang Collin’s and Sarah Hadley’s retelling of the classic 1990s romcom, though, Meg_Ryan and Tom_Hanks are a lot, lot weirder.
Permission to Spin | Apocalypse Theatre Company with Red Line Productions
Image by Robert Catto
Miss Polkadot has won Children’s Album of the Year and producer Martin and manager Jim want to get a head-start on the celebrations of what will be the launch of a global franchise. Spirits are high, drugs, alcohol, and money are involved, but Miss Polkadot, or Cristobel, wants out. The reoccurrence of a traumatic ethical confrontation means Cristobel wants to walk away and start again, costing her management everything they’ve hoped for.
Roomba Nation | Hurrah Hurrah
Image by Stephen Reinhardt
Roomba Nation is a thought experiment about the meeting place of modern technology, represented by the Roomba, and clowning in the setting of a clinical farce. Hurrah Hurrah is looking to explore the emotional unrest and dis-ease technological advancement induces for those who need a miracle.
DRESDEN | bAKEHOUSE
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.
Wyrd: the Season of the Witch | Ninefold
Image by 51 Watts Design
Ninefold reworks Macbeth as a quick supernatural thriller about the dark motivations of ambition and control. Director, Shy Magsalin, integrates the Suzuki Method of Actor Training in a physically and stylistically challenging staging of this wyrd story. Wyrd: the Season of the Witch is Shakespeare shifted and reimagined in a way you haven’t seen before.
Stalking the Bogeyman | Neil Gooding Productions & NewYorkRep with Red Line Productions
Image by John Marmaras
David once planned to kill a man. A man he hadn’t seen for a long time; a man he didn’t think he would ever see again. This man, the Bogeyman, raped David when he was seven years old and it’s time for revenge. Based on playwright David Holthouse’s own experiences and adapted with Markus Potter, Stalking the Bogeyman is a tense telling of trauma and the aftermath for a young boy and his future self.
Blackie Blackie Brown: the Traditional Owner of Death | Sydney Theatre Company
Finally, Australia gets its own superhero! But, knowing the work and activism of playwright Nakkiah Lui, it’s not going to be that simple. Following Blackie Blackie Brown along her quest for vengeance, this new Australian work is loud, provocative, bloody, and a lot of fun.
Troilus & Cressida | Secret House
Troilus & Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s infrequently performed plays, most likely due to the ambiguous characterisation and plot. Set in the final years of the Trojan War, the play is largely a satire of the great legends from the Odyssey including Ulysses, Agamemnon, and Hector. Coincidentally, there’s the added interest of the love story between Cressida, Calchas’s daughter, and Troilus, son of Priam and Prince of Troy. Secret House’s most recent revival of the play argues for its contemporary relevance with questions of identity, love, and war.
Night Writes 