50 Playwrights Send Postcards to the Nation DEAR AUSTRALIA

50 playwrights send postcards to the nation DEAR AUSTRALIA

© Donna Abela, Jada Alberts, Kathryn Ash, Janis Balodis, Chris Beckey, Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Mary Anne Butler, Elena Carapetis, Stephen Carleton, Rachael Chisholm, Claire Christian, Lucy Combe, Peter Cook, Kylie Coolwell, James Elazzi, Bumpy Favell, Future D. Fidel, Richard Frankland, Eric Gardiner, Dan Giovannoni, Matt Hawkins, Brendan Hogan, Tasnim Hossain, Barbara Hostalek, Anchuli Felicia King, Finegan Kruckemeyer, Nakkiah Lui, Kathryn Marquet, Tariro Mavondo, Nathan Maynard, Catherine McKinnon, Suzie Miller, Sam Nerida, Julianne O'Brien, Mark Rogers, Susan Rogers, Morgan Rose, Liv Satchell, Glenn Shea, Bjorn Stewart, Diane Stubbings, H Lawrence Sumner, James Taylor, Merlynn Tong, Emele Ugavule, Ellen van Neervan, Gretel Vella, Aanisa Vylet, Willoh S. Weiland, 2020.

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Australian Script Centre Inc, trading as AustralianPlays.org 77 Salamanca Place Hobart Tasmania Australia [email protected] +61 3 6223 4675 ABN 63439456892 POSTCARDS TO A NATION

Sometimes a person, or a nation, isn’t very good at expressing what’s at core. It’s why we have artists. An actor sacrifices a moment of their own life in order to give us a story of ours. A playwright scaffolds that sacrifice.

These 50 stories express a moment in history when a pandemic changed everything. They tell of the cracks that opened up, and of the darkness and light revealed. They are, in turn, confronting and comforting. Together, they are a revelation and celebration of Australian voices. They deal with where our nation is and where it might need to go.

How did we get there? I can’t think of another manifestation of theatre in Australia that has enjoyed such a remarkable coalition of forces working so whole-heartedly towards a common goal.

To get an even 50 playwrights, we thought we’d ask 25 organisations from across Australia to each select two playwrights. But which 25? Eventually, we believed it’d be most rewarding to go to the small-to- medium sector, that under resourced but fantastically rich spring of exploration. After settling on 25 organisations that felt reasonably representative of how this nation’s culture resonates, we were away.

And what a gang.

Australian Theatre for Young People, Barking Gecko Theatre Company, Blue Cow Theatre, Brink Productions, Brown’s Mart, Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, Griffin Theatre Company, HotHouse Theatre, Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Jute Theatre Company, La Boite Theatre Company, La Mama, Merrigong Theatre Company, Monkey Baa Theatre Company, Moogahlin Performing Arts, NORPA, PlayLab, Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta, South Australian Playwrights Theatre, The Street Theatre, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Theatre Works, Windmill Theatre Company, and Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company.

These organisations sometimes doubled-up on names, which meant going back to ask for a third choice, but pretty quickly we got to a list of 50 playwrights. Without any kind of intervention, this list of 50 was wonderfully diverse and distinctive. This simple fact indicates to me that, culturally, something is alive and well, ready to be elevated. And celebrated. Playwriting Australia, through the passionate help of Michelle Kotevski and Leila Enright, then commissioned these 50 writers to each write a short monologue responding to the barest of provocations:

What is happening right now? What is being revealed about us? What are we not paying attention to? What do we want to be to one another? What do we want our society to look like? Where do we want to go next? What is your postcard to Dear Australia?

And off they went.

Sometimes the playwrights wrote for particular actors, sometimes we helped with casting. Eventually, 50 actors leapt at the challenge to record these monologues, without directors, and mostly in their own homes. Such were the times.

Then Arts Centre Melbourne, through Daniel Clarke, ACM’s Creative Producer of Theatre and Contemporary Performance, thought it’d be great if the big performing arts centres got involved. Soon, Sydney Opera House, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Canberra Theatre Centre, and Darwin Entertainment Centre got involved, agreeing to livestream this national moment of reflection and celebration. Sydney Opera House hosted and livestreamed a panel discussion from the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre. Arts Centre Melbourne helped guide us to the gates.

And here, of course, Australian Plays publishes the words. How many of these monologues will become standards in auditions for years to come?

These 50 stories are a potent record of a perturbing time. They have arrived, fearless and fun, because more than 30 organisations, small and large, believed in the mission. They are a snapshot giving a glimpse of what 50 wondrous playwrights around Australia were observing and thinking, not only about the present, but about the future. They are postcards to keep and treasure. They are for Dear Australia.

David Berthold Executive Chair Playwriting Australia Dear Australia, a project of Playwriting Australia, premiered via streaming to Facebook and YouTube on the 2-5 July 2020.

With the participation of Australian Theatre for Young People, Barking Gecko Theatre Company, Blue Cow Theatre, Brink Productions, Brown’s Mart, Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, Griffin Theatre Company, HotHouse Theatre, Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Jute Theatre Company, La Boite Theatre Company, La Mama, Merrigong Theatre Company, Monkey Baa Theatre Company, Moogahlin Performing Arts, NORPA, PlayLab, Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta, South Australian Playwrights Theatre, The Street Theatre, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Theatre Works, Windmill Theatre Company, and Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company.

Presented in partnership with Adelaide Festival Centre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Canberra Theatre Centre, Darwin Entertainment Centre, QPAC and Sydney Opera House.

Additional broadcast, captioning and marketing support by Arts Centre Melbourne.

The 50 monologues were self-recorded by 50 performers.

The playwright-performer teams were:

PART ONE – 2 JULY 2020 Nakkiah Lui with Miranda Tapsell Elena Carapetis with Elena Carapetis Willoh S Weiland with Kris McQuade (Puppet by Noah Casey) Ellen van Neerven with Elaine Crombie Sam Nerida with Helen Thomson Morgan Rose with Emily Goddard Claire Christian with Megan Wilding Dan Giovannoni with James Majoos Bumpy Favell with Jessica Window Diane Stubbings with Jennifer Hagan Mark Rogers with Steve Rodgers Emele Ugavule with Anthony Taufa Ross Mueller with Marco Chiappi Eric Gardiner with Kevin Hofbauer Finegan Kruckemeyer with Glenn Hazeldine Anchuli Felicia King with Catherine Văn-Davies Bjorn Stewart with Bjorn Stewart Mary Anne Butler with Roxanne McDonald PART TWO – 3 JULY 2020 Glenn Shea with Kelton Pell Jada Alberts with Tasma Walton Stephen Carleton with Belinda Giblin Chris Beckey with Mémé Thorne Aanisa Vylet with Alaa Sukkarieh Merlynn Tong with Fiona Choi Brendan Hogan with Connor David Skillicorn Tasnim Hossain with Arka Das Catherine McKinnon with Jane Phegan James Taylor with Kyle Morrison Kathryn Marquet with John Batchelor James Elazzi with Sam Khatib Kathryn Ash with James Frecheville Rachael Chisholm with Shaka Cook Julianne O’Brien with Greg Stone Peter Cook with Stephen Phillips Susan Rogers with Peter Carroll

PART THREE – 5 JULY 2020 H Lawrence Sumner with Shakira Clanton Donna Abela with Aanisa Vylet Barbara Hostalek with Rayma Morrison Gretel Vella with Harriet Gordon Anderson Liv Satchell with Belinda McClory Lucy Combe with Kate O’Reilly Janis Balodis with Jacek Koman Suzie Miller with Emma Jackson Kylie Coolwell with Angeline Penrith Nathan Maynard with Richard Green Matt Hawkins with Pontsho Nthupi Tariro Mavondo with Carly Sheppard Kamarra Bell-Wykes with Danielle Cormack Future D Fidel with Pacharo Mzembe Richard Frankland with Jack Thompson

Dear Australia was inspired by a project of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland PART ONE 1...... The Night the Bleeding Stopped / NAKKIAH LUI 3...... On Xenia / ELENA CARAPETIS 5...... Hello Australia / WILLOH S WEILAND 7...... Baby, I’m Home / ELLEN VAN NEERVEN 8...... Ladies Against Lockdown / SAM NERIDA 10...... Slow Doom / MORGAN ROSE

13...... And My Body / CLAIRE CHRISTIAN

16...... Spirited Away / DAN GIOVANNONI 19...... Tap Tap Tap / BUMPY FAVELL 23...... Virginia / DIANE STUBBINGS 25...... Distance / MARK ROGERS 27...... Goodbye Papa / EMELE UGAVULE 32...... Family Man / ROSS MUELLER 36...... Shine Armour Scratch Repair / ERIC GARDINER 38...... This Stretching Cloth of Silence / FINEGAN KRUCKEMEYER 40...... Our Lot 44 / ANCHULI FELICIA KING 42...... The Fly and the Wasp / BJORN STEWART 44...... Threshold / MARY ANNE BUTLER PART TWO 48...... If only you could take a step in my shoes / GLENN SHEA 49...... Little Sister / JADA ALBERTS 51...... Limbo / STEPHEN CARLETON 53...... home is where the heart is / CHRIS BECKEY 56...... Home Schooling / AANISA VYLET 58...... SKIN / MERLYNN TONG 59...... Spiderweb / BRENDAN HOGAN 62...... Delivery / TASNIM HOSSAIN 65...... Woman at the Bottle-o / CATHERINE MCKINNON 67...... The Server / JAMES TAYLOR 69...... Oakwood / KATHRYN MARQUET 71...... The Flock / JAMES ELAZZI 73...... Long-Gone Distant Future / KATHRYN ASH 76...... For Once / RACHAEL CHISHOLM

78...... An Empty Church / JULIANNE O’BRIEN

81...... Barry / PETER COOK 84...... Polished Pebbles / SUSAN ROGERS PART THREE 86...... The Passenger’s Lament / H LAWRENCE SUMNER 89...... HAWK / DONNA ABELA 92...... Burning / BARBARA HOSTALEK 94...... Allan / GRETEL VELLA 95...... A Single Kiwi Fruit / LIV SATCHELL 97...... Flesh / LUCY COMBE 99...... Gone is gone / JANIS BALODIS 100...... The Fall / SUZIE MILLER 106...... 2020:232 Years / KYLIE COOLWELL 107...... The Bravest Thing I Ever Did / NATHAN MAYNARD 109...... Unconditional Love / MATT HAWKINS 111...... Second Coming / TARIRO MAVONDO 113...... The Time Before the Time to Come / KAMARRA BELL-WYKES 116...... The Epidemy of our Time / FUTURE D FIDEL 118...... There is the Light / RICHARD FRANKLAND Part One

The Night the Bleeding Stopped | NAKKIAH LUI

Aboriginal Woman, 30s.

WOMAN

The day the world started ending I miscarried. We were told to not leave our houses. Right as my husband locked the doors, I sat on the floor of my shower, the gushing waters drenching me as I cried in pain and my tears and blood flooded my bathroom drain.

There goes the future, I thought. I didn’t know whether to be sad or relieved did I want to be pregnant during an apocalypse? I wondered if it was my fault because I didn’t know whether I wanted to bring a baby into this world in the first place, even before it started ending.

In the end it didn’t matter what I thought because as I bled and bled and bled what replaced my baby was a heavy blackpit. Like a black hole that seemed to be sucking me inwards. As life left my body, I cramped over and held my middle, feeling so much despair that for a moment I thought I would just implode and disappear.

The hardest part was telling my parents I miscarried on a zoom. I couldn’t see them in person because of chronic health problems caused by colonisation -a slow genocide as each generation dies younger and younger. This time so young that their grandchild just bled out right out of me.

I spoke to my doctor over the phone - a very convenient way to get all the numbing drugs I needed. My husband and I played heads and tails as we created a suicide plan as to who would kill the other first (just in case). But nothing changed. I kept on bleeding, I kept on eating and then I stopped dreaming.

Who knew the end of the world would have UberEats and endless Netflix? That little black pit continued to throb in me and I started forgetting the past. Memories became de ja vu. No memories made death easier.

But just as I thought the world would end not with a bang but with a whimper… A black man is killed on a street in another country but a country with the same story as mine.

The Night the Bleeding Stopped | NAKKIAH LUI (continued)

Images of black bodies being brutalised started flooding the tv screens. Images I’ve seen all my life. Images I had gotten used to.

Then I had a dream. A little brown girl came to me and told me she was my daughter. We sat in my late grandmother’s house and my daughter held my hand and spoke to me.

She told me, Dear Australia, this: there was no Australia. No world to lose. No utopia to save. She told me my ancestors loved me and so did she. And then I woke up.

That night the bleeding stopped. And suddenly the dark pit in me became white hot anger. A raging question mark, from the destruction could there could be something new? Something better? That’s when I realised that my whole life has always just been creating life out of darkness. Creating a life in a world that didn’t want you. That was my inheritance as a First Nations woman.

And that is when my anger came back. And the world stopped ending. Because the world has ended again and again and again and I was loved, I am loved and will still love. As the world burned, I finally started to have hope again.

On Xenia | ELENA CARAPETIS

You know the Trojan War was started because of bad guest behaviour at a dinner party. True. Menelaus the King of Sparta was hosting his Trojan friend Paris for some mezethes and a lamb on the spit. Paris took a shine to Menelaus’ hot wife Helen and abducted her.

Now you’d think that the kidnapping and disrespect towards Helen was the thing that started the Trojan War, the big horse, the thousands of lives lost over ten years of bloody conflict. But no.

What really set the Ancient Greeks off was this thing called Xenia. It’s the idea that when someone knocks on your door you let them in and treat them like a god. And, importantly, they in turn show you honour and courtesy by not being a burden, by being respectful and promising to show you the same hospitality if you ever needed it.

Paris was a terrible, disrespectful guest. He violated this code. He transgressed the will of the gods. And he paid the price.

To this day, Greeks continue to embrace the idea of xenia. We don’t feel the need to ring ahead to arrange a visit, we just pop in. I know. Shocking. Visitors can knock on our door day or night and no matter what we’re doing, we happily and gratefully get up off our arses and let them in. Make them feel welcome. There’s always a stockpile of olives and feta, bought for the sole purpose of being served to unexpected guests. A Tupperware of kouramiethes to serve with Greek coffee, placed down on the table with a smile and an ‘oriste’. Whiskey in the cupboard. Chocolates, the good ones, just for guests. Just in case someone pops in.

We don’t groan. We don’t hide. We don’t roll our eyes and whisper to each other ‘who the fuck is that?’ when the doorbell rings. No! We love a pop in. It’s an honour. We love the company and the stories of others. It’s one of the reasons why we live longer.

I wish we all embraced this concept of xenia. Filotimo is another word for it… it’s hard to translate because English isn’t exactly... Well. Filotimo is complex. The closest translation is ‘love of virtue’. The willingness to do something because it feels right.

On Xenia | ELENA CARAPETIS (continued)

Australia… I love you. I love you enough to tell you when I think you can do better. You’re beautiful and nuanced. And I am so grateful to be here with you all. But there’s things we need to work on. Like our xenia. Like our Filotimo. Open your doors to people. Break bread more. Lean in to the stories and experiences of people different to you.

But mostly, be a good guest. Remember we are visitors here in this place we call Australia - I’m talking to you too, Greeks: this land has been home to people for millennia. Before Cronos had even dreamt of Olympus, this land was here, with its beloved people.

And we, on the whole, have been terrible, uninvited guests. We’ve taken advantage of our hosts. Caused them nothing but trouble and trauma and grief. We’ve transgressed our xenia. We’ve made the mistake of thinking this place that we call Australia is ours. But it’s not. So it’s our turn to offer the Filotimo. Honour our hosts. It’s time to be a good guest.

Hello Australia | WILLOH S. WEILAND

COVID enters and stands in front of a microphone. They acknowledge the large audience in front of them. Though the frame is stand-up, the delivery should be deadpan.

How’s everyone doing tonight? Hey, hey, hey. Want to know what you look like to a virus? Rows of scared little flesh puffs. Teeny weeny white marshmallow’s waiting to be melted. Yum.

Silence.

Tough crowd.

So a virus walks into a bar... and the bartender says, why are you doing this? Why, why, why (whining).

And the virus says…well there are lots of petty reasons- clutch purses, dog prams, active wear, business class. I mean a species that literally makes inequality visible in a tiny space where you could all die together- jerks. The snooze button- stop pressing it. Touchless bathrooms- they don’t work, all this hand washing and half of you are waving your hands under the tap like maniacs. Vibrating ab belts- please. The ‘like’ button- you’re pathetic. Tween marketing- we make our own hell don't we? And what about the time you blamed a generation of gay men for a virus- how you ostracised them as untouchable while you ran ads about how it was the grim reaper- have you considered that you may deserve this?

What's weird is, it's not my killing that seems to bother you, it's that I don't discriminate (even though I do draw the line at children). You just can't seem to believe you are not special enough to be spared. When the bartender asks why, I don't consider what a nice Dad he is- I just say, ‘Yum’. I leap in his mouth and devour his lungs one by one until he screams that he cannot breathe.

Silence.

There is nothing more awful than a hypocrite posing moral questions. Sure I’m filling random people up with pus but your law enforcement officers are standing on throats and when they

Hello Australia | WILLOH S. WEILAND (continued)

hear the plea, I cannot breathe- they press down harder.

You. You there, you there in the front row, the sweet couple with the nice haircuts and the cashmere cardigans- I have a question for you- who causes the most suffering. You or I?

Who is choosing who dies?

Baby, I’m Home | ELLEN van NEERVAN

Baby, don’t look at me, I’ve had a terrible day. I had to pull the plug on a chess prodigy. A preschool teacher. I don’t like my job. It’s a tough gig, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Long hours, always on my feet. People die, every day. Where’s the bottle opener? I really need a… thank you.

People are scared of me. They’re angry and they have every right to be. I’m just doing my job but I feel it. It hits hard. The family members, seeing their faces. When they can’t kiss their Mumma goodbye. My heart goes out to all those people. We’re lucky. We got work. We got this beautiful home. And we have each other.

The racism is not good. I see it every day. It’s not in my nature to discriminate, I’m Blak. But at my work, the failures of the system have never been so obvious. Yeah, you know me too well, baby. I do think about it sometimes with a Karen or a Bob here or there… giving them a little taste … but… I promise, I’m not evil like that. I’m professional.

No, I don’t feel like dinner, babes. Please just bring me some cake, I just want to eat cake and watch Masterchef. Did you see on Twitter… you know they be saying all of this stuff… I hope you haven’t been listening, baby, you’d be wild. They say I’m killing small talk. They say I’m sponsored by Netflix. They say I’m in the 5G. They say I’m a war.

I’m sorry, I didn’t even ask. How was your day? How’s it going with the climate change? Is that still bothering you? You know, I would never have picked us to be a match. Me, a devastating… or should I say, devastatingly handsome, Virus, and you, Mother Earth. But we just fit. I do wonders for your complexion and you just make me wanna be alive for another million years. And you know, we’ve been really going through it lately, but I just want to say, it’s so good to come home to you.

Ladies Against Lockdown | SAM NERIDA

Saturday, 9 May 2020. QUEENIE WATSON-TOWNSHEND stands in her expensive Sydney home, addressing a room full of well dressed women in their 30s - 50s. She is suppressing a dry cough throughout the speech - this can be as subtle or as grotesque as feels appropriate.

Excuse me, everyone, thank you, yes, Marcia, good to see you pet, yes. Sharelle, how’s Keith? Lovely. Oh, look at you all. I haven’t seen so many determined faces since September, when we gathered to Fight for the Foetus and Stand For Life. It is so thrilling to feel this sense of purpose once again. I hope everyone’s not too claustrophobic, sorry for the mess. I wouldn’t usually entertain in the piano room but, needs must.

So, tomorrow’s the big day. In your protest pack there you’ll find some key talking points, including 5G, the Wuhan lab leak, and the inflated death rates. It’s just like the flu. If they don’t know how many people have this thing, they can’t possibly know the mortality rates! To your left you’ll see sign writing materials, some light refreshments, and, against my better judgement, some of those mask things. Don’t worry, I cut holes at the mouth so we can be understood.

We’re lucky, do you see that? Not everyone sees the truth as clearly as we do. Tomorrow’s protest is our chance to help our less educated, less aware community. While they sit at home baking bread and Instagramming, suckling happily at the teat of socialism and (she gags a little) “JobSeeker,” our freedoms are being systematically stripped.

Ladies, I want to get real for a moment. Never in my life have I been this angry, this disenfranchised. We have been enslaved in our homes, subject to fines and imprisonment for…for wanting to eat a kebab on a park bench! Obviously I would never do that...well, maybe a smoothie, or a friand on cheat day...It doesn’t matter! It’s about having the right to choose. Then there’s the hypocrisy! Garbage men, McDonalds employees...baristas...they’re all allowed to work, to keep their dignity. But we are forced inside like prisoners. I am a type A personality, for chrissake.

Sneaky little apps, sneaky little meetings, spineless little men in Canberra trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We must not drink the Kool-Aid. We have the facts, we have the fury. History is

Ladies Against Lockdown | SAM NERIDA (continued)

on the side of the free, and always remember: our rights are like our glutes. If we don’t use them, we’ll lose them.

Slow Doom | MORGAN ROSE

NOTES *This is written to be performed for a camera. If it were to be performed in a theatre substitute the word ‘audience’ for ‘camera’. *Stylistically, it’s a Fleabag rip-off. There is an easy slip between the hyper-real and a to-camera confession.

A kitchen. Evening. An organized mess of origami everywhere. A woman sits at a table folding paper into something beautiful while eating a bowl of cereal. A mobile phone rings. She picks up the phone, she doesn’t want to talk to whoever is calling. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone. She silences the phone and goes back to folding. The phone rings again. She silences it again. Loud music from the apartment above begins. Free jazz. Beautiful for about 6 minutes and then incredibly grating. The woman freezes mid-cereal-bite, horrified: This has happened before. She looks at us, her audience.

To camera: WOMAN It’s 10pm.

She throws something at the ceiling. The phone rings again.

To camera: WOMAN Leave me alone.

She answers it.

WOMAN Hello! Sorry, I didn’t hear it ring-- my phone was on silent. It’s jazz.

Slow Doom | MORGAN ROSE (continued)

Jazz? Like music. From the apartment above me. Sorry. I’ve been really busy.

To camera: I haven’t been busy. To phone: I miss you too.

To camera: I don’t. Maybe a little. Pause. They want to come for a visit.

To phone: Not til stage 3. To camera: It’s a strange catastrophe. This one. It’s very. Relaxed. But I guess most doom is slow. To phone: Which graph?

Oh right. Yeah. Terrifying. To camera: Like with a tornado you hide in a basement or something and just wait. With a hurricane you leave early and sit in traffic for hours and then watch it all happen on tv from a hotel room. You wait while watching tv. With a volcano. You. Yeah you leave for that too. With cancer you go to the doctor a lot wait and wait and wait for test results and you feel real sad and everything sort of becomes. Like. Colourless. With ummm…drought you pray. And wait. You look up at the sky and wait. Even with like a bear or a snake you back away slowly, slowly. So I’m just. I don’t know. Trying not to wait too much. I’m enjoying the quiet part.

Slow Doom | MORGAN ROSE (continued)

Somehow the person on the phone has heard this last bit. This is startling.

To phone: Oh... I just... I said: I’m enjoying the quiet part. I don’t know what I mean. Sorry.

I should go anyway. I have so much to do.

A look toward the camera. This is a lie.

You too.

She hangs up. Looks up at the ceiling. The music continues. She sways to the music. A moment of appreciation. The music stops abruptly. She folds origami. End.

And My Body | CLAIRE CHRISTIAN

MIMI is fat, sexy as fuck, and her energy is frenetic.

MIMI My body is your ‘After Quarantine’ meme.

Hilarious.

I know you think it’s hilarious. I’ve always known it…because of that thing my Uncle said about “big girls” at a BBQ when I was seven. Or because Sam Ingleton didn’t want to kiss me in a game of spin the bottle in grade six because I was the chubby one. I’m not making that up, that’s what he said, “I’m not kissing her. She’s the chubby one.” I know it when I walk down the street and high-vis fuckwits yell out, “FAAATTT!”

You get older and you unravel most of the…bullshit. Wear a crop top out in public for the first time as a fuck you, and you feel hot because you’re dismantling the system…but the adolescent shit sits dormant in your mind waiting for moments to crash symbol shame into your everyday life. Like right now.

Fat. Bad. Got it.

I can’t quite reconcile a lot of the things in my brain right now. Like mass graves in the middle of major cities, and yet I’m pissed off about memes, and feel totally inconvenienced by the lack of eggs in my supermarket.

“Fuck the fucking Nigella Lawson cookie pots right in the fucking fuck-”

Fucking…I’m thinking about fucking a lot, too. And loneliness. And grieving. We’re grieving. Collectively. It’s a grief for what was normal. And what’s happening now. Like, having to watch Neil from finance speak directly into his webcam, like, way too close, in every Zoom meeting. Entirely infuriating. But I’d still fuck him. I think.

And My Body | CLAIRE CHRISTIAN (continued)

God, I’m so horny.

I swipe mindlessly on dating apps. When I’m not checking on my sour dough starter.

Covid-19 related comment about us being iso buddies. Left. Anything about toilet paper. Left. Eyebrow ring. Left? Right? Left. Saying you’re apolitical. Especially if you’re a white guy. No. How dare you be so fucking lazy. Left.

I’m looking for a man who can entertain a conversation, but most importantly I’m looking for a man who can fuck…with words.

I want a sexter.

Someone who will refer to my smile as, ‘wanton,’ and who describes in detail what kind of pleasure they’re going to ravish upon this body.

This fat body. Mine.

And I’m holding up my end of this interaction, crafting pieces of erotic fiction worthy of his blush, or his hard on. But instead I get hot literary offerings back like, ‘Oh yeah?’ Or, ‘And then what?’ Or, my personal favourite... ‘Aww! Without me?’ Yes. Without you. Your dick in my mouth is not an essential service right now.

And then I messaged Eli. Who says things like…

‘You orgasm again, and I watch the thrill on your face turn to contentment. I bring my face close to yours telling you how beautiful you look, how amazing you are, and how much I love to please you, kissing you light and quick, and then deep and hard, gently moving inside you the whole time.’

And My Body | CLAIRE CHRISTIAN (continued)

She reacts to the message.

Restrictions have been lifted a little more this weekend. Eli asked me if I’d get a coffee with him. And sit in a park. Meet each other.

I’ve been having some of the best sex I've had in my whole life and I still don’t know what his voice sounds like.

I hope he likes me.

And my body.

Spirited Away | DAN GIOVANNONI

Miles is seventeen and doing Year 11 from home. He’s looking at the screen, tessellated with the faces of his classmates – they’re in Miss Freeman’s English class. Behind Miles, you can see his bedroom walls, covered in posters. Miles Is that My Neighbour Tortoro?

The private message pops up at the bottom of the screen.

I turn around and look at my wall, the poster, above my bed.

He turns around and looks at the poster.

(whispers) Fuck. Fuck.

I move in front of the camera so my head takes up most of the screen and then I look at everyone else’s screen and realise that’s what they’re all doing, heads in frame to hide their rooms – why didn’t you realize that’s what everyone was doing, idiot!

Look back at the chat box, message is from Lachlan. Lachlan? Then I remember: the new kid. Quickly scan my screen to find him and…

He’s definitely older than us. Someone said he failed Year 12 and came here to try again.

His eyes flick to the bottom of his screen. Waiting for my reply.

I sit up properly, type:

Yes. Yeah! Yessiree. Delete all of those obviously. Then I type:

Yeppo! Have you seen it?

God, Miles.

He smirks. Shit. Not for ages he writes. But my dad made me watch it all the time when I was a kid.

Spirited Away | DAN GIOVANNONI (continued)

Cool dad I write back, and he rolls his eyes. Then silence.

He looks like he hasn’t cut his hair since lockdown so it’s all falling in his face. It’s looks good.

Keep checking to see if he’s written back, but nothing. Good one, Miles. Someone finally talks to you and you compliment their dad.

But then a minute later: Have you seen Princess Mononoke? And then, we’re just, like – chatting, for the whole class. About Tortoro and Ponyo, and he hasn’t seen Spirited Away which, I mean, is the best, and I tell him you can watch them all on Netflix now and he says he doesn’t have Netflix because his Dad reckons it lies in direct opposition to everything he wants to achieve in his life. It’s really nice to just… talk to someone, but then Freeman’s voice over the speaker: Miles you are obviously not doing the exercise, if you’re going to Google the answer can you at least make it look discreet?

Shit. Beat. Miles types his assignment and keeps looking back to Lachlan’s screen.

I can’t tell if it’s his camera or the bad lighting but he looks kind of… sad.

At the end of the class he writes:

Ok cool well bye.

Great to chat! I write. Delete that, obviously. Instead: This might be weird but… you can use my Netflix account. If you want. I type it out, mum’s email and the password.

Miles presses send.

I’m about to exit the class but… but then I type something else:

Spirited Away | DAN GIOVANNONI (continued)

Message me, when you’re watching Spirited. I’ll watch it with you.

Lachlan’s eyes flick to the bottom of the screen. He reads my message. I can see he’s typing a reply.

Just one word: Yeppo.

Miles smiles.

Tap Tap Tap | BUMPY FAVELL

o hello bad boi with your wavy hair I like those waves you list your butch masc-ness, your tools, your knives you love femmes, love watching them get dressed

I ask if you want to meet up not today babe, but send me pix

I send you a video of my feet dancing to the ceiling fan

I get on the country train I’m scared of every person in the carriage soon I’ll be alone in the rainforest gully far from any town safe in Gunnaikurnai Country o dancing grass o lyrebirds calm green on green and black and blue and shimmering roaring all the leaves in the wind you send me pix of your hand down your pants you tap about all the pot you’re smoking all the coke you’re snorting all the home-grown food you’re cooking all the queers you’re meeting, walking your dog at the creek a baby red bellied black snake warms itself in the afternoons under my doormat but I don’t tell you that

Tap Tap Tap | BUMPY FAVELL (continued)

come and visit me, it’s so beautiful sure babe, can’t wait, I dig nature but the lockdown starts in a few days, so I’ll wait to find out what they say huh? ring me! babe, you have beautiful body how do you know?

I just know. I can’t wait to fuck you by the time I take a good selfie, it’s getting dark swallows against the dark blue bats journeying black on black possum barks and shrieks

I cut off my head – I send oooh sexy I see you have a little belly babe it’s so good you’re dancing, getting fit for me

I read up on back-handed compliments as part of control I block you. I delete you nothing is real fear heart beating too much stop beating when will this end

Tap Tap Tap | BUMPY FAVELL (continued)

never

I unblock you you send me pix of your new sex toys in their big shiny black box

I tell you they’re baiting foxes so when you bring your dog be careful don’t tell me that all animals have a right to live, it’s humans that are the problem

I want to scream fuck your corny europe feral pest fetish fuck so… babe… are you going to sing me a song? I’ve been stalking your band pix

I tap back in a rush my father tried to shame me out of singing when I kept singing he stuck his tongue down my throat I stopped singing woah… babe… I didn’t expect that have you thought about seeing a counsellor?

I feel angry I tell you the fox took the bait and it’s dead woops I’m blocked

Tap Tap Tap | BUMPY FAVELL (continued)

gun shots, the hunter smoke, the farmer burning trees chainsaw, the neighbour cutting trees everything is screaming

Virginia | DIANE STUBBINGS

[The speaker is a woman in her late-sixties – seventies, or older]

He died ten days after they wheeled him out. Virginia. Drowned. Lungs flooded. He’d always wanted to drown. Not like that.

It’s the virus, they said. It’s taken him. Coincidence, I thought. A virus. Same way he killed me.

They buried him in his blue suit. I wasn’t there. Someone sent me a photo.

Not his real name, of course. Virginia. Will you take this man? I will.

Her books all over his shelves. Mrs Woolf. ‘There’s not been a decent book written since 1941’. This from an engineer. His whole life building tomorrow.

Pause.

One day … one day I get home and … Dancing about my kitchen, he was. Dancing about in a bright yellow dress, this crown of daisies clinging to what was left of the grey.

He was ready to be caught – ready to blurt it out – how many years it’d been going on – how much he looked like her – saw her face whenever he looked in a mirror – how she’d

Virginia | DIANE STUBBINGS (continued)

seeped into his soul – how being in that dress gave him a way out – imagining himself her – walking away from who he was – from his life – walking down to her river – drenching himself in that same past.

It’s the virus, they said, it’s taken him. Not before it’d taken me – grubbing its way into every memory, all of them blighted, all of them spoiled, til there’s nothing of you left, and the loss, crushing your chest, the rage, so you can’t breathe – you can’t – and the cold, the cold, the … the drowning.

Pause.

He should’ve been buried in it. That dress.

It was a beautiful thing. When I push back against my own death, my own dying, I know it. Him twirling about in his yellow. The flowers in his hair. The life in his eyes. It was a beautiful thing.

Distance | MARK ROGERS

I got your email late last night. Early this morning really. I haven’t been sleeping much, Ellie wakes us up before dawn anyway so I’m up at weird hours. Not doing anything. I just stay awake checking my phone. I spend all day in video conferences for work and then unwind by staring into another, slightly smaller screen. That’s relaxation for me at the moment. The footy’s been off so- It’s probably why I’m not sleeping. The screen time not the-. Anyway. I got the email.

Once I’d read it I left the house and walked the few blocks it takes to the beach and stood there on the sand staring out. It was still dark when I got there so I must have been there for ages because after a while the sky started to change colour. The sunrises here, I swear. They- They’re just-

I felt you with me. Him too. The old prick.

I wish I could have been there. I wish I could be there. Imagining you having to do all the organising and and with the hospital during all this when I can’t get over to help - it, it just snaps me in half, mate, it really does, it’s-

We don’t realise here, in Australia. You’d think the worst thing that was happening is that the Sea Eagles weren’t playing. 28,000 people in the UK, how many globally now? You fill Win Stadium up down the road and kill everyone in there and do it again and again 10 times over and that doesn’t even touch it. We have no idea. You should hear the way people speak about it – someone on the work call yesterday said she wished she was in Sweden because at least there they’re letting people die. Like that’s something we should be emulating. Letting people die to keep the shops open. But who’s dying, you know? Because if this happened to him, you know, and you can’t say he’s on the bottom rungs of society exactly, if this happens to him how bad is it for everyone else? People who don’t have a job, don’t have a house, don’t speak the language, don’t have daycare, don’t qualify for whatever reason for benefits or have their parents’ houses to go back to. How much worse is it for them?

He wasn’t a good man but he was our Dad, you know. He was our Dad.

Distance | MARK ROGERS (continued)

After this is over. I’ll get on the first plane. You’ll meet me at arrivals. We might not hug but seeing you will be enough. You’ll drive us to where he’s buried and I’ll say goodbye. Then we’ll go and have a drink. In a pub! Surrounded by other people! You’ll have lemonade. I’ll have a beer and we’ll talk. We’ll talk and we’ll. It feels far away now but soon, mate. Soon enough. We’ll be together.

Goodbye Papa | EMELE UGAVULE

Sione, 15, appears on camera. He is fumbling to find somewhere to place the camera comfortably. He finds a good spot, straightens the camera, presses record and takes a few steps back. He checks himself in the camera, making sure he can see himself. His hair is slicked back with gel to one side. Sione is wearing a black long sleeve collared shirt and a ta’ovala is wrapped firmly around his waist. He is not wearing any shoes. Behind him is a wall of photographs displaying a range of family members from different occasions.

Sione takes a deep breath, then pulls out a piece of paper from his ta’ovala. It’s a bit scrunched up, with sweaty finger prints from Sione holding it nervously.

Sione looks up and begins.

Malo e lelei,

My name is Sione Kulikefu Taufa and I am recording this eulogy to pay respects to my late grandfather Epeli Kanitola Taufa. It is with deep sadness that my family and I can’t attend our Papa’s farewell due to Tonga closing its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know he watches over us with love.

Papa Epeli was my best friend. He is my best friend. He was born in Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu in 1927. The youngest of eight. He lived through the Pacific war, World War II, the Korean War & Vietnam.

Papa watched Queen Salote visit Buckingham Palace on TV and Tonga declare independence from the United Kingdom. He saw the riots, the passing of King Tupou V and he survived cyclone Gita.

Our own personal walking library, he saw the world change all from his tiny island home of Tonga.

He also saw the small things. He carefully watched the leaves in his garden change later than usual, the warming sea rise and fishermen weeping for coral reefs that were once filled with fish become barren.

Goodbye Papa | EMELE UGAVULE (continued)

Sometimes at night I would hear Papa stirring, speaking to ghosts of his past. But when he woke he never spoke of them.

He had this amazing ability to always find the silver lining, the positive lesson in something. Whenever he would catch me frowning he would say to me “Sione, you are but a seed. You have so much to look forward to in life, my grandson. Do not let the wind pass you and set that frown. Oua lau e kafo kae lau e lava – stay positive and count your blessings.”

When I was small my bed time stories were our family tree. Papa could recite our lineage without hesitating. Four, five, six, seven generations worth of ancestors - Papa knew each and every one by name. He always said “Never forget whose blood nourishes your bones. When you don’t know what your mothers and fathers have done, you think you’re starting from scratch. You are neither the beginning nor end, but a continuation of breath embodied.”

A true poet, huh? Yeah (he pauses and smiles) that was my Papa. His favourite poem was Hala Kuo Papa - Path that has been trodden, written by her royal highness the late Queen Sālote.

He sings the beginning verse of Hala Kuo Papa, thinking of his Papa sitting outside the front of his house singing this song softly to himself as the sun sets.

Ne u nofo pē ‘I he hauhau-o-tangata I stayed at the hauhau-o-tangata

‘O fanogo he tuē mo e fakavetala And listened to the merriment and alluring singing

’A e manu launoa ‘oku toli he kakala Of the seductive birds pecking at the flowers

To’ona hono masa pea teki e sola ‘o kata Their wafting scent startles the stranger into laughing

Goodbye Papa | EMELE UGAVULE (continued)

Sione has become overwhelmed by the memory of his Papa singing, and takes a moment to embrace it.

I...I...I don’t know how to say goodbye to you through this screen Papa.

I don’t know how to accept that I will never shake your hand again or see your cheeky smile again.

I’m sorry I can’t be there to carry you and bury you. I promise to come visit you as soon as we can.

“Fakatu’amelie ki he ‘ete taonga ‘oku tautau i he fu’u telie.”

Sione laughs softly to himself.

You would say that to us everytime we got impatient waiting for food, do you remember Papa? Telling us stories of how you would wait all day to see your grandparents hang woven baskets of food from their umu? Wait to see those baskets sway in the afternoon breeze as they dangled from the branches of the telie tree?

Good things come to those who wait. You knew this. You taught us this Papa.

Although I can’t be with you today, I am glad you are being returned to the rich soil of your grandparents and your beloved home, Tonga. I know you are always with us.

Until we meet again. Goodbye Papa, Ofa atu. I love you.

Sione sings the final passage of Hala Kuo papa, and as he does he dances a final goodbye to his Papa, allowing salty tears to fall slowly down his cheeks as he dances and sings.

Ka tau tuē tuē oku kei fusi ‘a e fuka Let us cheer and cheer for the flag is still raised

Goodbye Papa | EMELE UGAVULE (continued)

‘Oku kapa-‘i-vai ‘ōlive ‘o e Hifofua The olive branch of the Hifofua still prevails

Pea ‘ilo ‘e he poto pea mo e ‘kāimu’a And the wise and vocal ones know

Kuila e lomipeau kuo taha ai ‘a e uā The flag of the lomipeau that has united the two

Sione slowly finishes his dance and song, walks to the camera, picks it up and ends the recording.

Notes and terms glossary

Malo e lelei - Tongan greeting

Ta’ovala - A type of mat worn during mourning that indicates how someone is related to a deceased family member

Palovepi - A Tongan proverb

Telie - A type of almond tree found in Tonga

Hifofua - a large double hulled canoe used by Tongan rulers in the seventeenth century, also known as a kalia -

Lomipeau - a large double hulled canoe used by Tongan rulers in the sixteenth century, literally translates as wave cutter or the wave presser -

Umu - Tongan term for an underground earth oven

Kai - Tongan term for food

Goodbye Papa | EMELE UGAVULE (continued)

Ofa atu - Tongan term of affection, literally translates as love to you

Character middle names’ were contributed by Anthony Taufa. Halo Kuo Papa translations were in consultation with Arieta Tora Rika and Aulola Tongileva. Permission was granted for the actor to include the use of Halo Kuo Papa into the monologue however they best felt was appropriate.

Family Man | ROSS MUELLER

(Gary is sitting on a stool on a porch, rolling a cigarette, he’s talking to his aging father)

Gary Sun is low. Winter closing in. Love the beach this time of the year. Wind and the rain. Seaweed and foam, a few crazy dogs. Fishermen. Be mad to be go down there in this weather. But we do. Don’t we, Dad? (We can hear some waves in the distance) So he got that dog. Got his own dog now. And we. (Pause) Okay. Let me start again. I said: “Let me start again.” (He stands up from the stool, smiles and takes a breath) Backyard looks good. The edges. (Sits again and then) So, the three of us pile into the car, him and me and this new dog and we are heading to the coast and I’m driving and I ask him where we’re going and I thought he was on Google fucken something and he’s like; “I’m just messaging Stinger about beers tonight.” And I’m like; “What the fuck, mate? I am driving you and your new dog to the beach in the middle of a fucken hurricane - can you please just – fucken?” And he’s back on the phone and I’m his getaway driver - burning fuel and bitumen, wipers need replacing and I’m not getting any younger and then he’s got it. “This Point is a dog beach, this is a good one, take a left at the next roundabout” A dog beach... This is my life now. The endless search for an “off leash area” for fuck sake and – and we go down there and he’s all like; “The problem with this town is that nobody knows anything.”

Family Man | ROSS MUELLER (continued)

He’s right but I can’t say that, can I? He’s like; “Dickheads and dope heads and fast food death.” And he’s right. But this is where I chose to bring him up and if I let him get away with that shit – then he’s going to be depressed for the rest of his life and hate me so I hear myself defending the indefensible and I say; “That’s true, but there are good points about regional living. “Like what?” “Well, we can afford the rent down here.” “That’s it?” “There are lots of footy grounds - golf courses.” I sound like a moron and he just rips right into me and destroys every choice, my whole life and he articulates why I am such a failure at all the things I love and he is right. This generation – they grew up with the internet and they know how to Google diagnose every fatal fault line and I know there’s too much pressure and... What did I know when I was his age? Right? A clinical idiot. I mean, I can set up the guardrails but that’s about all I can do. Right? If you get into micro- management they rebel, that’s what I did – it’s not generational, it’s just - young people say: “Fuck you.” Fight or flight. And that!... is the one thing I understand about being a father. Okay? Young men have no pre-frontal cortex. It’s not connected. So - fight or flight. They are not medically capable of critical thinking until they are like twenty five years old and so – because he cannot control his - contempt for me... I know most people would prefer it if I was not around. That’s okay, that’s cool. But I just... I am a father but I am also ... What are you looking at? (Pause) Don’t touch you face. Don’t lick your fingers, god why do you do that in front of me? (Pause) He likes you. You give him money.

Family Man | ROSS MUELLER (continued)

I think it’s good that he got the dog. They are rescuing each other and – why are you not listening? (Pause) The sun is low and I am driving ... and I ... What would it be like to... It would be... Quick. But what if I fuck that up too? What if we just - bounce off the guard rails and I end up with a steering column through my eye and breathing through a fucking tube? But he would be dead and then... I would have to live with that. Did you ever think that? You ever wanna...? (Pause) I can feel my mouth moving, but ... (Stands up) There are so many other people worse off than me. I speak English. I am a white male. I am grateful and I know everything is my fault. And... I ... just want it to be better... for him. He’s a good kid. (Sits down) Stupid fucken story. We went to the beach. So what? He’s got a dog of his own now. So? (Pause) The beach is shit. Bogans with surf rods and Pit Bulls. Doing Speed because it’s freezing. I hate the beach in the winter. (Silence) Okay. Said too much. I’m sorry. It’s good to see you. In person. Dad. (Silence. Lights the cigarette) Mate of mine just got a new Ford Ranger. Good deal. Good Finance.

Family Man | ROSS MUELLER (continued)

Yeah, he’s got a Plumbing business or something. Couple of kids. (Silence) Family man. (We hear the beach)

Shine Armour Scratch Repair | ERIC GARDINER

This thing cuts your circuits Fills up the wires

So you’re not thinking Wrapped up in the car And when you go to park You grind a pylon down the side

The paint descales The side caves in

And it’s no big deal, no dramas How can it be, with everything that’s going on? Not with these numbers that we’re seeing The numbers and their people It’s just some steel and carbon fibre

But where we are now Strung out on the edge It’s enough to make you lose what’s left

That concrete kisses like a hammer And fear and shame, they start to scream These chainsaws with no teeth And you are just this fish that’s drowning in the air

But there was a time, before this happened Somewhere between twelve and seventeen When you stopped imagining things Making something out of nothing, just for yourself You used to give the flowers names Can you find that place again?

Shine Armour Scratch Repair | ERIC GARDINER (continued)

Your dad leaves a can out on the verandah This pink slime, like something out of Nickelodeon Shine Armour Scratch Repair “Detailer-grade formula” Your dad goes back inside, he watches from the window And in the driveway, you scrub away at the car Until the paint shines bright and new And only the dent is left

And you can’t get that out on your own

This Stretching Cloth of Silence | FINEGAN KRUCKEMEYER

Narrator: Dear Australia,

When we closed our ports, we had our friends. When we closed our doors, we had our kin. When we closed our eyes, we had our thoughts. When we closed our thoughts… we had nothing.

But this is not a tragedy. It is, if anything, maybe a need.

This silence is a broad cloth, which stretches beneath the sky, and through the days.

When we lie on the grass and stare up at it, my quarantined family and I, we watch it ripple in the wind, this silence. We talk about its colours, and its shapes. We wonder how long it goes – both in measurements of metres, and of months.

When the autumn comes, my quarantined family and I, we hibernate with a fire always going. We have stacked a tonne of wood. We have started a large puzzle. We have started so many books. We have bought so much wine. We have set up the tent in the yard.

When the autumn comes, the leaves fall. And the stretching cloth of silence catches them. We see their silhouettes above us and my son, lying on the lawn, he names their shapes.

The cat walks lazily in and out of quarantine, oblivious as ever.

The silence is atop us and around us. But it is not with us. If anything, my quarantined family and I, we are louder than ever before. We laugh and argue and sing and shout and snore and sleep and wake.

These days are only one day now, one long day.

This Stretching Cloth of Silence | FINEGAN KRUCKEMEYER (continued)

And we share it. And I like it.

Our Lot 44 | ANCHULI FELICIA KING

(delivered at an auctioneer’s pace with a beaming smile)

We move on now to our Lot 44. Lot Number 44. Showing here behind us. Thank you very much indeed. Our Lot 44, catalog resume number four-four-four-four, dash-four-four. If you care to direct your attention to the work behind me. And before we start, please: enjoy. I must admit I’m shivering myself, just seeing the work again in person, although of course I’ve seen it many many times before our auction here today. The work is neither signed nor dated, we are looking at a property from a private collection, artist anonymous, still lots of interest, I repeat lots and lots and lots of interest, we will shortly start the bidding on Lot 44, four-four-four-four, dash-four-four The title of our Lot 44 is of course eponymous with the only text it features: “Go Home, Yellow Dog.” The artist is anonymous, although we can fairly assume of the late Melbournian school, where the work was unearthed. The medium is acrylic aerosol spray-paint on the temporarily erected wall of a construction site, the pigment that of the Ironlak Nitro four-hundred and forty-four millilitre bottle, which produces the sickening shade of jaundiced yellow you see behind me, a considered if unsubtle gesture given the theme of this work. While as I say the artist of this particular work remains unknown to us, it must be said that the work is part of a spotted yet expansive movement, one that, despite its historical roots, is marked by a series of profound formal innovations, namely the erroneous (and dare I say asinine) association of a viral infection with a certain multivariate cultural sub-grouping. Viral infections, as we now know, by their very viral nature cannot be singularly attributed to, much less caused by, any given ethnography, but that of course was not the prevailing consensus of the period. On the subject of authorship, as I say, we have a staggeringly large number of contenders, the depth and breadth of which remains frighteningly unknowable, as most artists of this school tend to keep their practice in the private sphere. However, many scholars have suggested we might attribute the work to the artist responsible for the piece’s famed sister work, titled “Covid-19 China Die,” scrawled in a contrasting primary shade of red, again clearly a resonant colour although perhaps a slightly more understated gesture than the nauseating yellow you see behind me. The medium of that work was similarly aerosol-applied acrylic pigment on a primed surface,

Our Lot 44 | ANCHULI FELICIA KING (continued)

namely the garage door of a family in Melbourne’s East, but unlike our Lot 44 the piece featured a performative element wherein a rock was thrown - is that the language in the catalog - I do apologize, was “chucked through a fucking glass window,” terrifying the involuntary participants of the performance within. They presumably did not think the work had any artistic merit. (laughing too loudly) Not to say that art has any merit in this country. (suddenly deathly serious) It is important to note, however, that although these two artists adopt elements of the same style, we must never make the mistake of definitively attributing their work to the same tradition, much less the same authorial intent. For this movement, like all movements, is not a historical rupture. This is not a new movement. It is contiguous. It is contagious. This is our lot and it is ongoing. (beat, smile) Are we ready to open the bidding?

The Fly and the Wasp | BJORN STEWART

*Mateo comes around the corner, he sits down by the fire where the other blokes are. Lights a smoke, he’s buzzed about something and can’t wait to share it. He needs to make this yarn interesting for his dickhead mates or they will go on talk about some other shit.*

MATEO: You ever seen a wasp, fuck up a fly? Nah I’m not fucking around. Cold-blooded gangsta fuck up a fly? Oi cunt, don’t be a dumb cunt. I’m serious. It was fucked.

I’m outside and I see this wasp, shiny thing too, look like a speck of gold, catch a fly, mid-air, spear tackles it Boom. Drop the cunt. Right in front of me.

Cunt starts eating the fly’s wings. I wanna know though, how does this cunt know that the fly is going to fly away? How did it know you gotta eat the wings first? You know that wasp isn’t eating those wings for food. It’d be like eating baking paper or some shit. This smart cunt thought ahead. He knew aye.

Hey, no, but the fly - but the fly’s trying to fight the wasp off, ouss ouss ouss, giving that wasp a fly punch… fly kick. Hahaha! Nah, don’t be stupid.

Oi cunt, but that wasp was taking those hits too aye, didn’t care just kept eating them wings. Punch the wasp in the face, kept eating. Poke the wasp in the eye. Kept eating. That wasp didn’t give a fuck.

Then that fly now tries to crawl away, trying to get out from under that wasp. What does that wasp do? Start eating the fly’s legs. Just plucking them off and shoving them in to his hole.

Oi fuck up cunt. Hang on, let me finish.

The fly was just a stump. Just laying there. Oi nah and this will make you gag. Nah seriously. The wasp then started munching on the side of the fly’s body, taking good chunks off it. Like eating

The Fly and the Wasp | BJORN STEWART (continued)

baked potato. The insides looked like baked potato. All white and fluffy. Then the wasp flew off, leaving a half-eaten, flightless fly buzzing on the ground.

Nah it was slack. I felt sorry for the cunt. I wanted stop it but, I didn’t wanna get stung, and you know, that wasp gotta eat too you know, it’s just… it tortured that fly for no reason. You both the same.

*Mateo then smacks a mozzie on his neck, he inspects the blood on his fingers as he continues.*

Then I’m like, imagine like giants just came in and just started ripping our arms and legs off then taking a couple of bites then pissing off. You’d be fucked aye. What do you do? Roll around trying to get help until you bleed out? Fuck that. Hahahaha!

Yeah giants, like in fairy tales, big rich cunts, covered in gold, eating us hahaha!

*He gets another smoke, the packet’s empty and scrunches it and throws it away but still smirking and giggling over this dumb anecdote*

Hehehe, ahh – I’m fucked.

Threshold | MARY ANNE BUTLER

CAST: Aurora; a planet SET: Aurora’s body ERA: Now

AURORA: Feel it creep in from the edges. Brutal. Ooze forward. Malevolent. Bubble upwards. Determined. Unstoppable.

Across deep time, these moments come. And you know, when it’s time. To cleanse. To purge. Begin again.

Spew up the bones of the long-gone-dead. skulls and jawbones femurs and phalanges vertebrae and sacrum skins and scalps. Watch the souls of them: dark, and dank, and rotten wend their ways back upwards like tiny charcoaled ghosts.

Once, I could hold all this inside me. The brutal cycle of death and renewal. Once, I could carry this load. But there is no give any more - and the bloodied marks of greed have worn me thin: bottomless pits blown deep into my flesh black bitumen scars scored across my skin kerosene ribbons fouling up my spheres

Threshold | MARY ANNE BUTLER (continued)

bitter bile of industry spewing out in thick, roiling waves souring streams, rivers, oceans. Clogging up my very lungs.

I have sent signs. Repeated signs: Glaciers melting. Sink holes forming. Rivers shrinking. Watermarks rising. Temperatures soaring. Oceans broiling.

I have turned whole countries into graveyards: hot, and dry, and still.

But still they’ve continued. I have parched the rivers empty, left food sources gasping. I’ve forged bushfires bigger than mountains. Spewed up lava, molten and angry. Stirred up monster storms and cyclones. Rolled forth landslides to wipe out generations. Brewed tsunamis to mow down whole communities.

But still they do nothing. Ears fused shut. Eyes turned inwards. Hearts shrivelled and selfish; numbed by greed.

…so I’m reclaiming what is mine. Like I have before, and before that again. Homo sapiens are but the blink of a cosmic eye. Another blink, and they’ll be gone.

Dear person. Dear city. Dear country. Dear world.

Threshold | MARY ANNE BUTLER (continued)

Here; my parting gift: Minute. Humble. Crafted with care. Like a snowflake; each with its own unique essence. Eight nanometres. Undetectable to the human eye. Sliding through water. Flying through air. Fusing to surfaces. Unstoppable, like a tsunami. One hundred thousand. A drought. Two hundred thousand. A cyclone. Three hundred thousand. A bushfire. Four. A landslide. Five hundred thousand. A volcano. Six.

I will adapt it. Nine hundred thousand. Mutate it. One million. Resurge it. Two. Renew. Three. Again. Four million dead.

Threshold | MARY ANNE BUTLER (continued)

And again. Six. And again. Eight. Wave after wave after wave. Ten million dead. Across the blink of a cosmic eye: Cleanse. Purge.

…begin again…

Part Two

If only you could take a step in my shoes | GLENN SHEA

Re: My friends

I feel a breeze … soft … cold. The season is changing. The patterns have shifted. We are no longer connected to the outside world. A new invasion of a foreign species has come to our shores to live amongst us. The docks are now empty after the gates have been open. Shall we just follow the yellow brick road? What is the outcome going to be, says the insider who does not know? This new species does not discriminate. It does not voice its prejudices amongst our people. It does not segregate by the colour of the skin. It does not look at us with disdain, and it does not keep its distance by crossing the road when it feels my being. It is silent… Can you hear it or feel it, or are you ignoring it by laughing through it as you let the system know you are not going to comply with its new rules by being alone, isolated. Do you fear it my friend? I do … I am at risk; my respiratory system cannot support my obesity as a man. I can barely breath as it is. Shallow breathes, my life is a silent rhythm of shallow steps. One step, two step, three steps, four, am I the virus knocking at your door … In my room, I have self-determination, sovereignty, I am independent, can I form a treaty with it by bottling its breath within this glass jar. If I drop it, will it shatter into a thousand species, sorry, pieces. I am alone, sitting on my bed waiting, listening, watching. I open my mouth wide and scream silently. Desperation. Is anybody hearing me. No. I am alone. What shall I eat after all the anxiety of my feasting? Waist, girth, waist, girth, wider and wider and wider and now I cannot move. I am slow and growing old, but I am not dead. I wonder how and when I might get support from the system, a system that is supporting its system of people, but I query in my mind as to why I cannot receive the support I might need, like the coin of a dollar or the colour of a note, or the decimal point in my account that says maybe I have a dollar or two to purchase an item I might need. At the end of the day it is just money and what is the purpose of money if you do not have it. And for some weird reason, Australia, now after eight weeks we have hope, hope that by working together we will sustain the losses of our indignity, we will rise to the occasion of our failings and strive to be the society we can be, whilst walking side by side with our new foreign invaders who are silent and free. Invisible to be deadly until an antidote we can see. But let us not forget our fine distinguished fellow Australians who have walked before us and fallen at their last hurdle of breathlessness. May they find peace and love in the comfort of their creator. Where do we go next Australia, my cousins place, just up the road?

Little Sister | JADA ALBERTS

Down a long line of cracks, your case worker calls She’s talking again at the notes on her desk So many names, so many families I think it’s you she’s referring to

Your mothers are missing you Your fathers all sing for you Your cousins are whispering your name

Longstocking, our paper clipped baby She doesn’t see the life that fills you up

The pops and scrapes of your teeth in your sleep The comfort you find in the graze on your knuckle

The list of children she holds is too long Each excuse a thread in a blanket so heavy It brings us all to our knees To our knees

She can’t get through, it’s going to be a while (She said that before, she’ll say it again) Oh there’s Business now and lockdown too We’ll try again but we need time

Your mothers are missing you Your fathers all sing for you Your cousins are whispering your name

Now the gates of your homelands are stood with blue soldiers And they’re sending in body bags instead of supplies

Little Sister | JADA ALBERTS (continued)

I hear you crying sister but I no sabi good You hurt your finger again Something blooms in your chest There’s nothing there I say I am forgetful forgive me Your pain is bigger than any cut

Sister remember Your mothers are missing you Your fathers all sing for you Your cousins are whispering your name I know a place that waits for you Your Country sister Your Country

Limbo | STEPHEN CARLETON

Pat, mid-60s, and mid-interview from a ship’s cabin. To camera, via Zoom. She’s had a go at making herself up for the interview, but there’s no disguising the fact she’s been room-bound for weeks.

Pat: Well, yes, with hindsight I think you’d probably say it wasn’t the ideal time to take the cruise. But the discounting was ridiculous. And you can’t predict the future, can you?

It’s not the route we’d ideally have taken. But the views of the various ports and harbours has been stunning. Even from this distance. We’re lucky we got a balcony.

And, look, what would we be doing otherwise? Sitting at home and frocking up to take out the wheelie bins? No thanks!

It hasn’t been all bad. We’ve got our health. They’re wiping everything down. The food’s quite nice. Frank even had a case of Argentinian malbec flown in by a drone, didn’t you Frank? Frank!!

Asleep. Or passed out.

Yes, they’ll look after us in Saint whatsit. Nevis or Kitts or …The island the ship’s registered in. Not the one Richard Branson owns, but another one in the Caribbean somewhere. They’ll let us off there and put us on a charter flight or… I’m sure they haven’t forgotten about us. They’re all the same, though, aren’t they, politicians? I wasn’t at all impressed with him during the bushfires. And I did raise an eyebrow when he told us all to cut our international holidays short and rush home!

Limbo | STEPHEN CARLETON (continued)

God. Doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago? Ah well. At least he’s not telling us to drink bleach. … You become quite philosophical, don’t you? Bobbing along in limbo. Looking at life through the portholes. There are some things you see quite clearly, that you couldn’t see before. Those people in northern India who can see the Himalayas for the first time in their lives. That beautiful clear blue of the water in Venice. Clear skies in LA. You do wonder, don’t you? Is this what it had to take? It feels like the planet’s just paused, and taken a breath. I said as much to Frank. ‘And what happens when we all breathe out again?’ I said. He didn’t have an answer. … It seems a shame. I can’t help but feel we were supposed to have worked something out. Done something differently. Or… I don’t know.

[She raises a surreptitious glass of Frank’s malbec. She takes a long slurp and looks at the vast ocean.]

I had tickets to Harry Potter…

home is where the heart is | CHRIS BECKEY

a camera begins to record they move away and into frame a room in a house. a private space, where one would not be seen nor heard.

Can you see me?

So I’m here surrounded the walls of my room the walls of this house Sheltered from this in the safe arms of family waiting for this to pass Stay safe Stay home

These walls are not my home My heart is here but not here It lies inside other walls walls I have built to stay safe Because these people who should love me their words their actions tell me if they could see me they would not love they would hate they would harm

I built these walls so that I can become what I need to become I have lived in them so long

home is where the heart is | CHRIS BECKEY (continued)

I have pulled them about me so tight they have become my skin

Before this everyday I could leave these walls feel a little free Walk through gardens filled with fresh blooms of learning into forests of knowledge Your leaves wrapped round me My spine pressed to yours I ate your words delicious words They moved beneath this skin catalysts for change preparing me to shed this skin

No more Now I am trapped frozen in this skin that is not mine in these walls that are not home suffocating

Everyone safe that’s what they say they’ll keep everyone safe none left behind none forgotten But if you’ve never been seen there’s nothing to remember

home is where the heart is | CHRIS BECKEY (continued)

and nothing to forget

Can you see me? Can you… see… me? they move towards the camera they switch it off.

Home Schooling | AANISA VYLET

It is the first day back at school after the 9-week lockdown. Houda is being confronted by her English teacher Ms Pazin due to an incident during an online classroom stream where Ms Pazin was bombarded by her students with the complaint "I'm confused" (instigated by Houda). This monologue takes place in a stairwell in between classes where other students or teachers could appear at any time.

Ms Pazin is aware that some of her students were able to cope with the lockdown better than others. Houda in particular (as the “naughtiest" student in the class) found it very difficult. Her confidence in literacy is very low and she very much seeks attention in class due to expectations to be selfless at home. In this unique moment, Houda is reaching for help rather than pretending that she wants to be left alone.

Houda: Like, like, Miss - I get it, I get it!

But…what else did you want me to say? I was confused. I’m confused! It was the truth - I wasn’t trying to be a smart-arse Miss, it’s just I’m confused!

Look, Miss – I tried. I tried to talk to you - one on one - in lockdown – remember? I asked why there was no zoom classes in iso?

Yeah, but – in the class stream they all started saying “I’m confused” because they were too! I wasn’t trying to egg anyone on and when you said; “What are you confused about - you need to explain, Houda exclamation mark exclamation mark”. I was like; “No offence but what - bracket lol bracket” because like, how was I supposed to answer that question? I wasn’t trying talk back at you Miss…I mean, I said that ‘cause’…I can’t get things if you don’t explain them to me, ok?

(Beat.)

Like, the smart Asian chicks are fine – they are usually in iso with their parents on their back. But like, my house? I mean, it was Ramadan, so it was hard to concentrate with my mum’s food processer going on and off and on and off to

Home Schooling | AANISA VYLET (continued)

make sure we had a feast fit for kings to break our fast – which is so stupid, because that is not the point – and then, like - my parents are pretty old, but they kept going out – dad almost died when he realised Flemington markets was closed. My brother thought COVID was bullshit! It was all made up. Yeah, and like, how do you explain COVID to someone who has Down syndrome?

I mean, he didn’t care during the bushfires ‘cause the New Year’s Eve fireworks were still on! Which was so fricken stuffed - sorry, Miss.

He is 35…but you know he couldn’t go out with his groups, so he was at home and he kept getting upset at us and wanting us to take him out – and the stuffed up thing is he still had to go work. The “job” where he gets $3 an hour to pack boxes – I mean why was he, someone who is high risk, who could die from COVID - why was he still going to work? Why didn’t he get JOBKEEPER! Why doesn’t he matter?

In Ramadan – during Iftur – he – he pulled his Bulldogs robe over his head and put his arms up like a ghost and said, “Hey look, I’m invisible! I’m invisible.”

(Beat.)

He is.

(Beat.)

So, yeah, like…I’m confused Miss…I don’t get it…I don’t.

SKIN | MERLYNN TONG

LING speaks to MEI on a screen.

LING: Are you eating? You look skinny. Your bones jut out of my screen. Drink the ginseng I bought you. Brighten your skin until it gleams in the sun. But, no. Do not go outside. Our skins are yellow glutinous traps. Those people hurl insults, vitriol and hate at us. And they stick. They seep into my bones. Stay inside Mei. Send Simon to the shops.

Is Simon still kind to you? Do you let him touch you? Caress you? (I know, I know you hate that word). My skin is starving. It wants your heat.

Are you soaking your belly with chrysanthemum? Red constellations trace your eyeballs. Heal your eyes with Mummy’s favourite tea. Remember how when she was alive she used to say that tears are blades of our weaknesses? Never reveal them.

Do you know the weight of my skin Mei? Almost four kilograms. If you laid my skin out, it would fill two square metres. The size of this balcony. Matt lives inside, and I, out here. He is the only one I am allowed to touch, sniff, lick and fuck—and he disgusts me.

But you already know this.

I will have to go before four o’clock. Before Matt returns.

Stop crying for me Mei. Stop. I need to know that you will be ok.

Are you calling the police? Put the phone down. Right now. It’s happening. Can’t you see? I am releasing, I am uniting, I am unzipping my skin. Mei can you still see me? Are we still connected? I am floating like Chang’e. Do you think I will reach the moon? Four kilograms fall away, maybe more. Look at your sister! I am a feather. It’s lovely Mei. Spend this moment with me. My flesh kisses the air, my flesh kisses the sun, I kiss the earth. I hope to kiss you again.

When I get there, I’ll tell Mummy you said hi.

Spiderweb | BRENDAN HOGAN

*The character of CHILD can be played by a boy or girl, aged 9-13. The ‘age’ of the child mentioned in the script can be changed to reflect the age of the performer.

CHILD is standing outside the door of another child’s house.

CHILD: The playground’s closed. The council put a sign up saying no one’s allowed to play. But it’s the only one, so I still go. What are they gunna do, fine a ten year-old?

You get the swing to yourself. And the slide. And best of all, Kaleb Greene is nowhere to be seen.

Remember when we played king of the castle and he stood on top of the spiderweb and wouldn’t let anyone else get up? We were all scrambling up the ropes and he was kicking and yelling and spitting until people fell through the web or just gave up. I gave up.

But you didn’t. You just kept going back up and up. And then when you were almost at the top, and everyone could see that Kaleb was gunna lose,

Spiderweb | BRENDAN HOGAN (continued)

he changed the game. He always changes the game when he’s about to lose. And everyone just lets him.

Yesterday I climbed to the top and just sat there. Alone. It was so quiet. I just watched the street and thought about all the little people stuck in their houses. And I thought about you… and the thing that happened before the lockdown.

Beat

I made this card for you.

CHILD has a card. They read it.

“Dear Charlie, I’m really sorry for not letting you play gang tiggy because you’re Asian and Kaleb said we would catch the coronavirus if you touched us.”

Beat.

...I don’t know why I put my hand up when we took a vote, but I think it’s because I was scared of Kaleb. Sorry.

Beat.

“I know it’s not true about you having the coronavirus and I’m really sorry. P.S. You don’t have to forgive me if you don’t want to.”

They stop reading.

Spiderweb | BRENDAN HOGAN (continued)

...So, yeah, I’ll just…

They leave it at the door

It’s okay, I used hand sanitiser and sprayed the card with Glen 20. So, yeah.

And um, if you wanna, I’ll be at the playground this afternoon on top of the spiderweb If you wanna... What are they gunna do, fine two ten year-olds?

Delivery | TASNIM HOSSAIN

A young man of South Asian heritage. An international student – accent not necessary.

It’s steaming in my hands. Your naan and butter chicken. Getting soggy in the plastic bag. Comfort food, isn’t it?

Not that butter chicken is a “thing” back home. Naan is. Definitely. Crispy at the edges, straight out of the tandoor.

I ring your bell.

It’s my fifteenth delivery already tonight. Everyone told you to support local businesses, so you do. Then, everyone said to order direct because delivery companies are exploiting restaurants.

Problem is, those companies are the ones that hire people like us and yes, they pay us next to nothing, but having next to nothing is better than having actual nothing.

But tonight, you can’t be bothered finding the restaurant’s number and you’re back on the app, so it’s me bringing you your dinner instead of the guy who’s usually a waiter but is now playing delivery driver in his mum’s Honda Civic.

And once again my company is taking twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five per cent of what you pay, and you don’t care.

Because even though you’re lonely and you can’t stand the sound of your housemate’s voice anymore, you still don’t want to call up the Indian takeaway yourself and have to try to understand what they’re saying.

And I’m not complaining.

I’m not.

Delivery | TASNIM HOSSAIN (continued)

Because it means I can keep paying my quarter of the rent on our two-bedroom flat. There’s four of us there.

Pervez and Jehangir are Uber drivers, but nobody is going anywhere anymore. And Soheil washes dishes in a restaurant that never worked out how to get online. Used to wash dishes. And he has a wife and son back home.

Whatever home is now.

And whenever people look at us, I can see what they are thinking.

They think “international student.”

True.

“Here to take our jobs.”

[laughs] Sometimes true.

“IT, MBA, computing, accounting.”

Not true.

I study science – climate science and disaster preparedness – because of the floods and cyclones back home, but this, this is something else.

This is fire and anger and fear and there’s no help, not from the government, and whatever money we have goes to rent and studies.

It’s the mosques and the gurdwaras that make sure we eat every day. A hot meal at night, ready to pick up, if you can get there. Sometimes Jehangir gives me a lift. Sometimes it’s a train and a bus.

Delivery | TASNIM HOSSAIN (continued)

But I’ll be fine, I will, and I’ll finish my degree and I’ll get a better job and I’ll keep working hard and when my student visa ends, I’ll apply for residency, even though everyone says I will never get it.

…Which makes no sense to me.

Because the Aussies go to places like New Zealand and Canada and the UK all the time to live and work and party and make money – I mean, not now, definitely not now – but…

I’ll be fine. I came here to learn how to prepare for disasters. I think this country could probably use me.

I’m thinking all this as I wait in the cold for you to open your door so I can put your naan and butter chicken on your Welcome mat and then move away – because everything is contactless now, like meals and money and anything human – and there you are.

And I go to put the food on your step, like I’m meant to but you grab it and hiss “don’t put it on the ground” and do your very best not to touch me, and you take your dinner into your bedroom and your housemate’s door is still closed and you eat alone.

And I get back on my bicycle and ride to the next restaurant to pick up more orders to deliver.

Woman at the Bottle-o | CATHERINE McKINNON

I’m in the bottle-o, standing in line, on the little yellow circle thingy that has been painted on the floor for social distancing. I have a six-pack of beer for Ben, a bottle of whisky for me, and a bottle of wine for both of us. We need it, after the day we’ve just had. The SECURITY GUY comes over and he says, New law for COVID-19. You can have up to two boxes of beer and one box of wine, or two boxes of beer and two bottles of spirits, but not all three, and he points to a sign by the cash register. Now I’m standing behind a BIG GUY with a freckly cheeky-faced kid, and he has a trolley loaded with two cases of beer and one case of wine, and I say to the SECURITY GUY, But I’ve got less than him. The SECURITY GUY says, Doesn’t matter. I say, So it’s not about volume but variety? He says, Correct. I say, Surely that law was brought in to save a run on the shops, or to stop people drinking too much, either way that’s not me, at least not compared to him. He’s got 60 bottles of booze. I’ve got eight. I laugh. BIG GUY with the freckly cheeky-faced kid laughs. SECURITY GUY says, If you put the wine or whisky back you can get another case of beer. I’m mad now because it’s moronic. I say, does that make sense to you? He says, It’s the law. I say, But isn’t it up to you to make a COMMON SENSE judgement call? SECURITY GUY, puffed up, red-faced, says, Put one item back or I’ll have to escort you from the shop and he steps forward. And I say, Whoah, watch your social distancing, you’re breaking the law. He turns purple at that but he steps back. And the WOMAN behind me pipes in, Don’t pick on him. He’s only following the law. And the FRECKLY CHEEKY-FACED KID, must be four or five, says, Hello Lady! and waves at me. And I say to the WOMAN behind me, If the law said, let’s run any children between 4 and 7 off a cliff, because we have too many of the little fuckers, would you do it? And the WOMAN says, Oh my god, how can you say that? And I say, Because it’s about whether something makes sense or not. Because we are NOT SHEEP BLINDLY FOLLOWING ORDERS. And it’s all about OUR SECURITY, right? And I look around at this point and realise that every customer in the shop has stopped still, all with their booze in hand, watching. And I say, BECAUSE IT’S COMMON GOOD, COMMON SENSE THAT WE’RE AFTER, ISNT IT? AND THE LAW, WHAT IT IS, HOW IT’S INTERPRETED, IS UP TO US! (Beat.) Blank expressions. And I think, hopeless, hopeless. And I think, What the fuck do I put back— wine or whisky? And I think, Fuck you Virgin! Fuck no-one giving a shit! Fuck the future! And that is when the FRECKLY CHEEKY-FACED KID starts to laugh, like really laugh. She says, That was funny. And I look at this kid, with her sunshine smile, and I think shit, I made someone’s day at least, and I laugh a bit and say, Was it? And then BIG GUY starts to laugh because his

Woman at the Bottle-o | CATHERINE McKINNON (continued)

daughter is laughing, and the woman behind me laughs, and the laughter becomes infectious and this is the amazing bit because pretty soon everyone and I mean everyone in the shop is laughing, even the SECURITY GUY, and it becomes this great big belly-aching group laugh. (Beat.) When it subsides, the SECURITY GUY says, You still need to put one item back. (Beat.) And I’m about to say, Ok, here catch, when the WOMAN behind me says, I can buy your wine. And I say, Thank-you, but that’s not the point, and she says, But it is the point, isn’t it, it’s up to us?

The Server | JAMES TAYLOR

Magnus - An eccentric bartender, the Jekyll and Hyde type (think Rumpelstiltskin meets the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz)

Setting - At home, sitting in his favourite armchair. He talks to himself, to the audience and on occasion, to his Grandma’s ghost.

Actor feel free to “slangify” words such as “setting” to “settin’” or “them” to “em” etc.

Magnus: Provider of service, was little old me. In a pop-up bar, setting up in the street. Now the streets are deathly silent cause the virus made them still. No more little piggies travelling around at will… I tell you what, my bloody dog’s happy! She gets me all to herself… With a dog you always know where you stand. Do something wrong, get bit. Nice and simple... I like things nice and simple. All my heroes were humble, steadfast types. Like me Grandma. She didn’t make much of a fuss about things. She had a small circle of influence. You might say she lived and died in obscurity - but to us that knew her she left a profound impact.

Though it may not seem lofty In service we strive For the needs of another. We live to brighten a day To be the cause of a smile. Commitment and passion, dedication to others.

I live my life in the hopes that when she sees me in heaven, she’ll be proud of me. God too.

I don’t like to say it too loud, in case someone makes fun of me. But I can’t help believing in God. I feel his presence all the time. It’s not anything miraculous or nothing, and he doesn’t stop me from suffering. But it’s like there’s this faint little

The Server | JAMES TAYLOR (continued)

whisper that wants to keep me on the straight and narrow. Though I don’t always listen. He tells me not to hate people and not to judge ‘em. Not that people return the courtesy mind you.

I always try me best: Get the beers on ice Make sure everything looks nice Recommend the fancy wines and be sure to pour them just right

You’ve always gotta smile.

On a night like this - under normal circumstances - I’d be starting work soon.

It’s on nights such as these, There’s a gentle breeze And it’s late when the sun goes down. In fifteen minutes, you’ll hear them descending like locusts; swarms of greedy Piggies come to rule the town. They’ll want what they want and they’ll want it done fast, and expect you to smile with a foot up your arse. Don’t give the wrong change ‘cause they won’t just complain, they’ll shoot daggers like you’re the devil incarnate!

And so it goes: around and around and around, dragging the little Piglets through town. Faces buried in iPads, stuffing down sugar, ice-cream dribbling down their little chins. Growing up to be entitled little bastards, cause Mum and Dad are too busy to spend proper time with ‘em.

Whaddya reckon ay Grandma? Maybe this naughty little virus is just what the doctor ordered.

68 Oakwood | KATHYRYN MARQUET

A large meeting room in the fictional Oakwood Abattoir. WAYNE, 45+, a troubled, febrile man, stands in front of a large crowd of employees. He may have a microphone, which he’s not adept at using, and possibly a wobbly little stand to place his hands.

WAYNE: Yeah, squeeze in. Frank, you done the count? We got the three-50 in here? Right, I’ve called the family together because — no, Debbie, I don’t need a bloody mask. I need to be frigging heard — Toby Jones from Boning had an incident yesterday, and, while he was waiting to get his fingers glued back on, he got tested for this bastard corona thing, and it’s come back positive. Now, I’m not worried by this — no, I’m not —and none of you legends should be either. Frank, close that bloody door: the pigs are shitting themselves (he laughs, which turns into a cough).

Now, here at Oakwood, as you know, we’re one big family. We look after our own. So, we’re going to shut down and give you some paid R&R. Just a few days, mind you. We’ll take the advice of the bloody gestapo and do a deep clean — for you. Even if it’s just a sniffle they’re bloody ruining the economy for, and the hospitals are fiddling with Toby’s results for funding — we’re doing it. To protect you. Now, because we’re one big family, we don’t go outside the circle, right? We don’t talk. Not to nobody. We look after you, you look after us. Not a word to the fake-news media. Not a word to the wannabe dictators in government, trying to use this as an excuse to take away our rights — our constitutional freedoms. Not to anyone. Cos that’s what this is all about, you get me? It starts with them telling us to eat more vegetables. And, slowly, like a chook in fucking boiling water, it ends with the police state, tracking everything we do and forcing bloody vaccinations and 5G on us. (His cough worsens).

Yeah, we’ll play the game. Yeah, we’ll shut for a few days. But, then, we’ll get right back out there together: electrocuting, slaughtering, slicing, hosing away guts, knee deep in blood. Because this family — each and every one of you — understand that you’re essential to the Australian way of life. To putting meat on Aussie tables. The meat industry’s taken the blame for the SARS, the MERS, the Swine and the rest of the bloody lot and that hasn’t stopped us yet. No bastard flu or disease or whatever you call it

Oakwood | KATHYRYN MARQUET (continued)

has ever come from an Aussie abattoir, you hear me? We have standards. We’re not the bloody Chinese, chomping away on raw bats and — panda-golins. We’re not the bastard halal torturers, sending money to terrorists overseas. We’re clean. Even still, there’s some that would love to see us shut down. Oh, yes, they would. But I’m not having it, and neither will you. Give us beef, or give us death, am I right? (He begins to cough and cough and cough. And he can’t stop coughing. He manages to pull it together for the final rally cry). So, after this poncey fucking clean, you put your heads down and your knives up. You don’t say a word to anyone. You keep slaughtering stock at lightening speed, like you do best, knowing that we value you. You’re family. Our family. And, families stick together. You’re all bloody heroes.

The Flock | JAMES ELAZZI

Farmer Tony rounds us up, whilst that damn farm dog keeps barking at us. Little bastard, always frightening us into submission. Don’t know why; that dog is half our size and yet we still allow him to so easily control us. ‘That’s it boy, keep em in line Rusky!’ the farmer yells. Sweet disposition some might say.

I’ll admit it, I’m shy and maybe...a little fearful, but I’m here, with the rest of them. Right behind Roger and Bill, there ain’t no better example of safety in numbers. ‘Move faster Roger!’ Bloody bastard walks so slowly.

Good ol’ Roger; he and I had a little falling out last week. Word on the street, Roger was talking ill about me, claiming that I’m always chewing on the best grass before the others wake up...but, of course, turned out the rumours weren’t true...water under the bridge now, we’re all walking towards that gate together.

Keep roundn’ em up Rusky! That’s it boy! Farmer Tony’s voice is loud and controlled today. All four hundred of us don’t dare question why we’re made to walk through that old gate today. I’m just following Roger, who is following Abdul, who is following Kate, who is following Adam, who is following Anthony... Who wants to be left behind?

As we make our way to that rusty brown gate, I turn my head and look up at the Magpie sitting on that branch, silently staring at us. Then I glance across, past Rebecca...and fuck me, there’s an opening in the flock, with Rusky on the other side. I glance forward and notice the farmer preoccupied with the gate hook. I can easily make a run for it, into those bushes. Should I? Should I do it? Think you fucking idiot. Think!

Panic sets in. Breathe you slow bastard! Breathe. I look at the rest of em, still trotting towards the gate. I can’t even see Roger anymore. This is your last chance. Don’t stand still.

The Flock | JAMES ELAZZI (continued)

One moment.

Second moment.

Nope...Fuck it. I’m part of this flock, this group. There must be a reason we’re being led through that gate. Roger kept mentioning some sort of paradise once we pass the gate and I’m not about to question it now. I’ve earned it! Always giving farmer Tony my best wool, year after year. This must be my reward after all this time. I put my head down and continue making my way with the rest. ‘Roger, you prick, wait for me! I’m comin’!, I yell.

Rusky’s right behind me now barking, keeping us rounded up. There’s no gap anymore and that magpie has flown away.

Guess if that magpie looked down on us from up there now, there’d be no way of telling us apart. I look ahead and I have to tell ya, it ain’t no open field we’re going into today, seems more like a huge shed. It doesn’t matter, as long as we’re all moving glacially into Roger’s paradise.

The Long-Gone Distant Future | KATHRYN ASH

A young man in loosely fitting hospital gown sits in a starkly lit room on a fold-away chair that squeaks if he moves. A number of items are laid neatly out in front of him on a fold-away table; hand-sanitizer, a face mask, a yellow legal note pad and pen.

His knee begins to jiggle, the chair squeaks. He presses on his knee to still it. His eyes fix to an upper left corner of the room, having decided this is a camera-point.

Like I said. Everybody there was up for it, true story.

Yeah-nah fair play, there was a fuck-tonne a bog roll involved but it was all over the road, boxes of it, whole neighbourhood descended on it like carrion. We was gonna redistribute it. Yes. To old people’s homes and that. Give them the basics, mate.

You recording this?

The lack of response in the room rattles him. His knees jiggle. The chair squeaks. He presses both knees to stillness with closed fists.

My old man seen this full shit show coming, too right, when everyone else was thinking snug fuzzies like ‘aw, we’re all in this together’.

We are not. If we was, I wouldn’t have to be high-jacking bog-roll trucks.

Which I wasn’t.

Right from the start, he knew - straight up opportunistic mass-manipulation. Ten years ago, right, when all you lot were hunkering down thinking about your fucken—artisanal breads, n’ fucken—doing virtual tours through all the world’s fucken museums, on your great backsides, bingeing on “Tiger King” and shit, my dad and I were working it out.

The Long-Gone Distant Future | KATHRYN ASH (continued)

We had the jump on this whole fucken game.

Bet you even downloaded that fucken safety app. You sheep. Baaa.

Is he all right, my dad? Seen him go down like a sacka spuds. You didn’t need to do that.

I used to think he was— (he whistles as he twirls his finger at his head). —true story. He never had much time for me, and I always kept outta his way, eh, because he was always banging on about government surveillance and sov’run state, and the un-constitution, and nothing that struck me as fucken useful info at the time. Then first round of iso in 2020 and, aw man…

Early one morning, he shakes me awake and he says we is going on a trip and I was like, fuck off, no trips, we can’t take any trips, we all gotta stay home, and he like, smacks me on the earhole and says I was living my life on “assumptions and educated guesses that go unquestioned and get the fuck up”. Yeah, all right, all right, and I’m shitting myself because I think he’s been up all night because the loungeroom’s a tip and it reeks of old bong water, and he’s all red-eyed and urgent. And we pile into the Mazda, and I can see him shaking like a shitting dog, and I think, okey-doke, I’m dying today in a horror smash with me dad, fair play.

So we drive up high into the back hills and roll into Atherton Shopping Village carpark by 8 am, and he hands me this fucken shopping list, and he’s like ‘get two trolleys’. I’m like, what? and he’s like ‘don’t even’, so I do it. Toilet paper. Bleach. Canned stuff- your beetroot, your corn, tomatoes. Tissues. Panadol. Batteries. Tetra-paks of milk. Jerky. Oil. Cans of Dog food. We didn’t even have a dog.

We glide back down the hill, me with a pallet of baked beans under my feet and a 12-pack of Quilton 3-ply floral print soft double-length pressing on the back of my neck, and the old man looks relieved. Like he’s gone to the dunny and done the most satisfying dump of his life. First time ever he’s talking to me not at me, and more to me than he ever has in all

The Long-Gone Distant Future | KATHRYN ASH (continued)

my life and he says we are partners in this, and that just floods me with (what’s the word?) infinity.

Driving back he fills me in; the shape of things to come. And he was right, wasn’t he? The re-infections, the lock downs, time after time, year after year, for no fucken reason, the surveillance, surveillance, the harassment, the crackdowns, the civil disobedience, the martial law, the riots.

He tells me to throw my phone out the car window. He tells me why and I throw the fucken thing out the window so far and so hard I hear it crack and burst on the side of a tree. He tells me that’s the last the government ever gonna hear from me.

Pause

Til now.

Where is my father?

You can’t keep me here! (can they?)

I want a lawyer.

I’m cold! I need to piss. There’s nowhere to piss!

You have to give me the basics.

Pause. He puts on the mask. He picks up the pen in his shaky hand.

For Once | RACHAEL CHISHOLM

Reader is anyone who is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent.

Reader: For once please, listen to me, to us. I’m scared for my people.

When I heard that the government had been sending body bags into the communities my heart stopped.

Rumour says that they ordered two thousand body bags. Two thousand. Not for the country. For the Territory.

When I head on the radio that two people from one of the remote communities had gotten coronavirus, time stopped for me…..and a feeling of dread from deep within my bones took over my body.

This is it, I told my family, this is it, this is how our culture dies….because people don’t wanna wash their hands, they just wanna keep fishing, they don’t wanna listen.

‘Ah calm down’ people were saying on Facebook ‘this will be over in a month, we’re isolated’ ‘It’s not in the community, it’s okay’ ‘you know the Government is trying to control us through this right?’

Are you all stupid?

Haven’t you been watching the news? The Italians are running out of pasta. Pasta. In Italy.

This is serious.

So please for once, just listen to me.

For Once | RACHAEL CHISHOLM (continued)

I know there are still many things that need to be reconciled between Aboriginal people and the rest of Australia, but the wider community needs to understand, right now, how it would be devastating if this virus was to get inside out remote communities.

So please, for once, just listen.

You see there’s this housing crisis, up to more than a dozen people could be living in a 2 bedroom house, old people and sick people, babies and the very young all in the one house, all sleeping on the same mattresses. It’s like there’s no room to breathe.

And if one person in that house was to get a virus, it would be like a bomb dropping over Japan, that might sound like an exaggeration but it’s not.

Not for us.

For once, please just listen to me.

I would ripple effect through the house, out into the community.

We wouldn’t just be losing lives, we would be losing our culture too…our languages our dances, and our songs.

60,000 years of history that managed to survive invasions and massacres, and the Stolen Generations dies all because people won’t wash their hands or stop going fishing on the weekend.

So please just this once, listen and stay off my land.

An Empty Church | JULIANNE O’BRIEN

Character: Father Chanel, middle-aged Catholic priest

Middle-aged priest, FATHER CHANEL at the altar of a small Catholic Church looks out over the empty pews. Speaks directly to camera.

CHANEL: (wryly) I was thinking of retiring any way….. (pause)

It’s been 6 weeks like this. Empty.

I secretly prefer it. The truth is, if I’m honest, I don’t really like people. I think that’s true.

But yesterday I did a small funeral - with the requisite 5 people - and I felt….something….new.

Looking into each of their drawn faces…..I could read each……painful…..individual…story….. The faces were more….vivid. The intimacy was …..(he can’t find the word, shakes it off) I spoke in this strange low tone. I felt I shouldn’t be speaking at all.

Reminded me of a time when I still believed in magic.

10 years ago….a single mother moved into the parish with a baby. The baby had severe cerebral palsy. Couldn’t move at all. Not a single muscle.

The mother came to me and we prayed for a miracle. But I didn’t hold out much hope for the child. For Teaghan.

She wanted to put a call out in the parish newsletter for volunteers to do her idea of this homemade physio. The thought was that if she could get people to take

An Empty Church | JULIANNE O’BRIEN (continued)

turns manipulating the tiny girl’s limbs for hours every day – that it would stop the muscles atrophying and even teach the muscles to work by themselves.

The magic of healing hands.

47 people applied.

They worked in shifts, round the clock, for months. For years. They called themselves Team Teaghan. Some of them learned how to change her feeding tube, others just kept…massaging…just kept it up as her thin, limp, pink limbs grew longer…

(takes a breath and rubs his stiff neck)

God, that’s what I miss! Touch. (shoots a look at camera) Not what you’re thinking. I allow myself a Thai massage once a week. On Wednesdays. My one indulgence. Not being married…..not being in a relationship… I realised….at some point….I realised…. I still needed touch. So that’s on Wednesdays. Or it was. Rest assured it’s relentless self-flagellation every other day of the week!

But there was no magic in the end for Teaghan. No miracle.

It didn’t work. The healing hands. She wasn’t even able to bat a fly from her face when she died. Aged 10. That was her funeral ….the small funeral….yesterday.

But they were here. You couldn’t say they weren’t. Team Teaghan. You could practically see every one of them.

(surveying the empty pews, he now sees Team Teaghan in some alternate dimension, occupying the pews, smiling)

I guess the miracle was the 47 people.

An Empty Church | JULIANNE O’BRIEN (continued)

(Pause)

(goes to Altar to start Zoom Service)

Anyway, I prefer it quiet like this. I don’t really like people. I think that’s true.

(begins virtual service) “Good morning, friends. Thanks for joining me at St Mary’s in these unprecedented times. First some housekeeping, if anyone knows where the key to the……………”

Barry | PETER COOK

Michael, in his early forties, sits on the floor next to his bed. He is in a crumpled suit, like he was about to get ready for work then slumped to the floor in a foetal position and cried for an hour. He has one sock on, his tie is half done. Today was meant to be his first day back at work and he’s making a video to send to his employer.

The leaf can be anywhere within the frame or hidden from sight until he decides to pick it up, or it can be in his hand from the beginning of the text, whatever feels organic for the actor. We should see him crying at some point while he is talking about the leaf in the park, but if the crying happens earlier it’s ok.

I’m not doing it. I can’t. I know we’re meant to be back today and obviously I started to get ready, but I’ve stopped. To be honest I don’t know how anyone can go back.

He starts to get out of his suit and tie etc. and change into a tracksuit, or something he might wear to a park, it should be mismatching or done in a way that we as an audience become aware that how he looks or is seen is the furthest thing from his mind. He can stop and be still to talk, as long he is completely changed by the end.

The first four weeks I did anything to avoid being alone with my thoughts, filling myself up with food, alcohol, drugs. Binging TV. Zooming. Learning to make bread from scratch.

Then one day I woke up and my mind was racing, you know, searching for more things I could do to distract me but there was nothing. I couldn’t hide from anything that morning. I got up and I walked to my lounge chair, not the couch, my lounge chair, its more comfortable… and I sat down and I looked out my window at the clouds drifting through the sky and I started to cry. Softly at first, then I started to sob. I haven’t been able to stop crying since. I cry at every show I watch on Netflix, I cry when I see an old person cross the street… sometimes I just sit and cry for the beauty of the world… sometimes I sit and cry for all the cruelty. One day I just got up and went for a walk in the park, something I haven’t done since I was a kid, and I saw this leaf on a tree. Just one leaf, amongst all the other hundreds of leaves and I had the time to look at it, to just look at a leaf… and I wept. For the first time in my forty years on the planet I stopped to look at the magnificence of a leaf. I reached out and felt the texture, and I saw the veins and its wrinkles, that’s what I call them – wrinkles - and then this leaf it fell to the ground and I felt so sorry for it, this tiny leaf just stranded on the grass and I mean anyone could

Barry | PETER COOK (continued)

have come and stood on it, and I’d taken it from its mother, you know, the tree - and obviously I felt guilty – so I cradled it and brought it home with me.

He looks at the leaf.

We only exist within the magic of nature. Ha. You know I would never have realised that before this. I was too busy mindlessly wading through my existence without ever looking out the window to see we’re killing the very thing that gives us life.

It’s crazy to think that the earth had to give us a virus, just so she could rest. She had to give herself a little bit of quiet so you know, she can start to heal. It’s like she’s turned around and shot us in the leg so we can still crawl and she’s standing over us with a gun still pointed at us hoping we’ve learned our lesson but if we don’t learn she’ll keep shooting until BANG …it’s one between the eyes. She’s being cruel to be kind is what I’m trying to say.

I’ve had the time to start listening and I get it.

The phone pings He looks at his phone as though he’s just received a notification from apple news or something.

Oh great. Rio Tinto have just blown up a sacred site that shows 46,000 years of continual occupation. Just…FUCK! Why can’t we see that there is so much knowledge in this country about how we can work together with the land without raping it? But no, fuck that, we just blow up sacred sites and put ten year old’s in detention centres and continue a cycle of oppression forgetting that over 60,000 years of information about this continent is available if we’d only just give Aboriginal people a voice. (He starts to build into a rage) How much noise does the planet have to make before we start to listen? She’s made us stop so we can see and hear that she is hurting. How can we not see this is why!! We just need to stop!! JUST STOP!!

BEAT

All of us just need to stop and be still and be silent and listen.

I’m so still now… I can hear the silence. It feels like being under water. Can you hear it?

Barry | PETER COOK (continued)

BEAT

When you can hear the silence, then you can really listen. Listen with me.

He plays Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major on his phone or some other device.

I look at this leaf and I listen to the notes of the music and I… it’s all I need to know that life can be beautiful. All this crying has emptied me and I feel clean. I don’t want to taint who I am now by going back to who I was. I’ve decided that I’m going to preserve this leaf, this leaf I’ve called …Barry...and I’m going to take really good care of him.

Michael springs into action and grabs some plastic bags he’ll take with him to pick up the leaves.

I’m going to go and rescue some more leaves from the park and… I need to name them all which, you know… that’s going to keep me quite busy…too busy to come in to work so I guess this is my video of resignation. Obviously I was lying about all the work I’d managed to complete while I was in lock-down, I haven’t done anything at all. But in another sense, I’ve done everything. I feel like a letter of resignation trying to explain all of this might have made me sound a bit, you know, crazy, so I’m glad I made a video… it’s more professional.

He leans into the phone and stops the video.

Polished Pebbles | SUSAN ROGERS

An old man. Mid-eighties. He looks young for his age. He is wearing good sports clothes. He is alert and engaging. He is sitting on a park bench.

Five minutes from home and here is this playing field. I like the tall dark trees, bluish shadows, a brush turkey dance hall. Old people arm in arm, the fit and sweaty, dog walkers, the council man in a sharp green vest. And me ten times round the oval. Talking to myself observing greens. Hookers green, May, olive, lime. In this new morning all the greens smell fresh.

Dear Australia, my mother told me you started with a cloudburst. That is why you smell so fresh. She escaped London, smog and family with my Russian Father.

I take another walk at night. The skies are quiet, time and silence with me. We are all of us caught, all fragile humanity, in shifting fears.

The man with the banner in the US of A. “Let the weak die”, he had scrawled. Let the weak die. His friend carried an Assault rifle. “My Rights”, he screamed. And the mothers, the brothers and sisters. They keep dying. The uncles, the neighbours, the boy who played violin.

The bus driver who let me ride free? Where is he?

Yes, yes, I am worried about food. And panic. Empty shelves. Not for love or money can you buy a piano, knitting needles or flour.

On Tuesday. It was in the papers, a Mountain Orchid. A child noticed it. Not seen for one hundred and forty years. I wondered was it where the fires were. Reborn in fire?

I read they closed the Communities. Remote places in the Top End. To keep their elders safe. No one is dying there. I enjoy my great age; the days are sharper clearer. I have stories but no one asks me “Old man what do You hold for us?”

I had a friend. He belonged there.

Polished Pebbles | SUSAN ROGERS (continued)

“I understand, I do.” I said. He marked the space between us with a wide fury. We did meet again and ate together easily.

I married a Hungarian. Our son married a Persian. She dreams of a lost Pomegranate Orchard. That is what we are here. Beautiful bits and pieces. These fragments, they are polished pebbles in my hands. All the colours so well together.

But this drowning death, it creeps around amongst us. Frightens everybody. And we cannot touch.

All the wet towels, the watermelon seeds and sleepovers, laughing, sulking, and a million crumbs. The hairy dog, the spilt milk. Skinny legs all over the place. Grandparents Day. Is all missed. The Lego cries in its box. When can we play? We are so tidy here now.

Part Three

The Passenger’s Lament | H LAWRENCE SUMNER

With reticent mind I return to the world and hold my soul aloft. Is it still the world I knew?

I take in the first cool breeze of Autumn And fight against an imaginary lack of breath.

I conjure the worst fears in this new world. The touch of a hand, or an embrace. Lips that meet, only to pass on a scourge. Never to transfer love.

The train arrives. Taking my seat, still afraid to get to near, yet wanting company. A smile. Laughter. A morning after, held by another.

We are strangers on this train. Strange companions in social recovery.

We sit and listen to each station announced, wanting contact, keeping distance. No one raises their heads to smile at me.

Is this still the world I knew?

I catch the eye of a fellow traveller and we acknowledge our mutual derision of the last skeptic amongst us. One lone, middle aged woman in a medical mask. What is she afraid of? No new cases for a month now and still she holds out.

I relax into the rhythm of tracks and passing light. Returning to work, I leave behind an unmade bed and a cupboard full of hoarded pasta and toilet paper.

I smile, close my eyes and allow myself this small mercy.

The Passenger’s Lament | H LAWRENCE SUMNER (continued)

That I was ready for the new normal.

But there is no such place.

I open my eyes and passengers are standing. Men, women, teens. Every seat occupied and the aisle full to capacity. Even the masked woman has someone beside her.

But next to me an empty seat. As it was, it shall ever be.

For them, my skin is the thing to keep at bay. My colour is false cause to be distant. I need no plague, no mark, no scarlet letter - And I see this world is no better for having suffered.

No change, no new world, no new normal.

It is still the world I knew.

Where ventilators and high price tags Are for the lighter shades. While those like me get body bags And avoided like the plague.

A hundred souls on board and yet, not a soul comes near. The empty seat beside me is the loudest voice I hear.

It screams. ‘Nothing has changed!’

The Passenger’s Lament | H LAWRENCE SUMNER (continued)

The world I knew had no place for smart, female, black. With reticent mind I returned to the world.

But...

The train stayed on the track. The train stayed on the track. The train stayed on the track.

HAWK | DONNA ABELA

a monologue for digital performance

CHARACTERS Young Mum Young Child (off-screen) Young Husband (off-screen)

SETTING A room.

PRODUCTION NOTES Please record this on a hand-held iPad or similar. It is our eye into this world - the audience’s deliberately limited POV.

HAWK CAM https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/red-tailed-hawks/

YOUNG MUM, red eyes and mangled hair, focuses the attention of her young child (out of frame) on a live bird cam they are watching on an iPad.

YOUNG MUM (soothing bedtime story voice) look … lots of chicks … or one chick with lots of heads … sleepy heavy heads … all tucked up … twitch flap flop … yawn - wow, birds yawn … or maybe that one’s hungry … slip of a thing … wind wants to carry them off … good thing she’s sitting on them … beaks up her bottom … twitchy feathers and fluff … can’t get comfortable mum

Young Mum looks up, holds her breath, and listens with her skin.

She breathes, relaxes a little, resumes describing the hawks.

HAWK | DONNA ABELA (continued)

YOUNG MUM (soothing bedtime story voice) … up in the windy sky … highest nest ever … she’s all eyes … see? … eyes in the back of her head … checking on chicks snoozing like you … but that little chick … twitchy … this way and that … bad-dreaming … she looks into his brain … just by looking she can stop the bad dream … do you think hawks can do that?

Young Mum looks up, holds her breath, and listens with her skin.

She breathes, relaxes a little, resumes describing the hawks.

YOUNG MUM (soothing bedtime story voice) … the mummy hawk can see brainwaves … hear things before they happen … doesn’t miss a trick … her hatchlings barely born but she … she senses things … big things like … the temperature of time … the sound of a sunset … the taste of the wind and -

Young Husband bashes violently on the door. Startled Young Mum drops the iPad. When Young Husband opens the door, Young Mum stands and screeches at him. [The iPad camera captures fragments of the action from the floor.]

YOUNG MUM (O/S) (screeching) What is the taste of the wind?

Stunned silence.

YOUNG MUM (O/S) (more calmly) Have you … ever … tasted the wind?

HAWK | DONNA ABELA (continued)

Pause. YOUNG MUM (O/S) (calm) Why not?

Off screen, Young Dad closes the door and walks away.

Young Mum picks up and repositions the iPad, and draws the attention of Young Child back to the hawks. YOUNG MUM (soothing bedtime story voice) look … he’s awake … head fluff sticking up … like your hair in the morning … but she’s unperturbed … she’s an unperturbed bird. do you know that word? … time is different for her … she IS time … all the time in the world …

Young Mum smiles at Young Child (off screen), and reassuringly strokes their hair.

END

Burning | BARBARA HOSTALEK

CHARACTER MEENA Mature aged Grandma, adult, 60-65 yo, primary carer to her 8 year old granddaughter.

SETTING Meena is making damper in her kitchen. During lockdown time between 28 March and 18 April 2020.

SCENE There’s a knock at Meena’s door.

(Calling out) I’m in the kitchen Junie - You’re right on time for a cuppa! (Normal voice) You see Lizzy riding her bike out front?

You won’t believe it. I burnt the damper yesterday. True I’ve been cooking damper since I was Lizzy’s age. Shops still out of flour! I had to get this instead - packet bread (massages dough) Won’t be the first time us mob have had to adapt…

I broke the little one’s heart yesterday. Kneads bread angrier and faster

Her Mum calls. First time in 3 weeks. Tells her she’d been upgraded to maximum security and in the same breath asks her what she got for her birthday. Poor thing’s standing there, not saying a word. Her lips pursed, face scrunched up… I told her (sweet tone of talk) “tell Mummy what you’ve been doing, tell her about your birthday, quick, she’s only got 15 minutes”.

Burning | BARBARA HOSTALEK (continued)

Why is it Junie when you want them to talk nothing and when you want quiet you can’t shut them up? “Tell Mummy about your bindi bindi cake, Uncle Jimmy driving by tooting the car horn, your cousins hanging out the windows yahooing” but she said nothing (pause) not a word - didn’t stop her Mum raving on about life in prison being top dog - imagine telling an 8 year old you’ve been upgraded to max and wearing a red top – cause of a fight - not her fault - AGAIN. (Read fast) I couldn’t help myself Junie I yelled over her shoulder “tell it to your lawyer…sort it out…” She says courts coming up. I’m down as her bail address, ‘Like Christ’ I say under my breathe. Silent Lizzy stares at the spot she punched last time Mum called.

I lost it, went wild – snapped.

I snatched the phone and told her STOP ISOLATING YOURSELF, YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE HURTING. I’M NOT GONNA LIVE FOREVER, my LIFE could be cut short – with this ‘spikey-virusthing’ doing a tour – who’s gonna care for your daughter then?

A door slams - Lizzy’s gone. My head’s a whacked nail, somethings burning I can smell it (pause) oven timer’s beeping (longer pause) I end the call on a better note “I love you, I’ll write when I can…” (beat.) I can’t wokidge my own daughter - I’ll go to hell.

Beat.

(looks up) More milk, for your cuppa?

Allan | GRETEL VELLA

ANGELA I’ve met someone. His name is Allan and he’s a Gemini. I know that because on May 24 he had a giant novelty donut bouquet delivered to his door with ‘Happy Birthday Allan’ written on the front. I’m an Aries you see, so that already tells me we’re compatible on an astronomical level. Allan is very sweet. I can tell. Whenever I’m off on a trip to the supermarket, he’ll always throw me a smile. And this one time when I went to get the mail and he said ‘how are you?’ and I said ‘Angela’ he pretended it didn’t even happen. Like a true prince. Allan lives next to me in apartment six and I hadn’t even noticed him before all this happened. But I suppose that’s what a pandemic does, doesn’t it? It opens your eyes to all the little joys sitting right there in front of you. In normal circumstance I’d probably just go over there and ask him out. But I really don’t want to be that girl. The one who spreads an infectious disease in her efforts to pick up. So I’ll just bide my time, I reckon. And in any case, I sort of like to joke we’re living together already. Technically we share a building. And a wall. And the same air.

You don’t have to say it. I know what you’re all thinking. Especially you, Deb, in your little box. Angela’s reading into things too much. Angela’s skipped a few dozen steps in the ‘program’. But you know what? Fuck the system, people. Fuck the program. If I wanna skip ahead and move on with a guy who likes novelty donuts and Pizza Hut then shouldn’t that be celebrated? Isn’t that the freakin’ point of this group? Especially after you guys went on about how hard I was going to find isolation. About how much I was going to think about him.

Sid hasn’t entered my head since I’ve met Allan. Honestly. Like, at first I used to hear random noises and I’d forget, and think they were Sid, but now I just know they’re Allan. And when I’m in bed at night and Sid’s not there, I just imagine the wall dissolving so Allan’s right next to me. And sometimes this weird thing happens, right, where I get a pain in my chest and suddenly remember how Sid was alive, like, only 24 days ago, and it slowly dawns on me that I’m trapped in here with all his stuff and his smell and I’m completely and utterly alone -

Did you hear that? Allan’s taking the bins out.

A Single Kiwi Fruit | LIV SATCHELL

A woman appears. The image we can see is her through the camera of an iPad call.

Hey Jess. Sorry I missed your call, I only just got in.

She’s pulling clothes off – a scarf or jumper. She responds to an unheard question and, from there, speaks without interruption from the unseen responder.

Yeah work was fine. I saw this woman who made me think of you.

She sits down so her face fills the screen.

I’d just finished, and I was doing my usual routine at the front gate – you know, five minutes for the sweat to start drying. So I set off, down Missenden like I always do, but I couldn’t have gone more than a block or so, I hadn’t even made it to King Street yet, when I saw this woman coming towards me and she was so –

You know when you see someone, and you know their face but you can’t place them – I was so struck by her and I just couldn’t work out where I knew her from. I tried to catch her eye, to see if she recognised me. But she just walked straight past, so I thought I’d follow her for a bit to see if I could remember. Her face was so – sad? So something – I couldn’t put my finger on it.

She turned into this grocer on the corner – lots of staff get their lunch there, they do these amazing dolmades. They’re a holy experience Jess, I am not even kidding. It’s like going to church in your mouth. She went in and I followed her – I couldn’t even control my body, I swear, I just walked straight in behind her.

She picked up this single kiwi fruit and just held it in her hand. I was pretending to check the oranges and I looked up, straight into her face, and it hit me – the ward. Of course. That was where I knew her from. Her father was one of my patients. He reminded me of Dad a bit, really. Small, wiry.

A Single Kiwi Fruit | LIV SATCHELL (continued)

He was only conscious for about 36 hours but it gave us enough time to make all the calls he wanted to make. She’d called a lot. I would set up the iPad and each time I’d see her face pop onto the screen with this bright smile. This smile, you couldn’t believe it Jess – we could have turned the lights off and you wouldn’t notice, it was so bright. She and I would say hi to each other, but I’d only stay for a few seconds, make sure the connection was stable.

I’d only ever seen her face on this screen – on the one on the ward. That was why I didn’t recognise her at first, outside, just on the street. And this morning, she didn’t look like – anything. She had no expression – she was just holding this single kiwi fruit in her hand and looking at it, like she was waiting for it to speak. But then she looked up and caught me just flatout staring at her and this rush of hot and cold jolted through me, like I’d been plugged into a socket.

But her face was just blank. She didn’t recognise me. I’m not surprised, seeing me for a few seconds here and there, she’d had no reason to pay attention to me. But she looked at me and I couldn’t look away. And I realised that I was crying. We just stared at each other and then I smiled at her as much as I could and she smiled back – not the bright, light up the room smile, this other smile. Quiet. We smiled at each other, and then I put down my orange and walked out of the shop.

I wish I could have given her a hug, you know? And that made me think about the last time I gave you a hug, and I can’t even remember when that was. Do you?

Flesh | LUCY COMBE

It’s been eight weeks, five days and three hours since I last touched another person, or another person touched me. I wouldn’t have made the calculation, but someone posted a meme, next to a shot of their ‘iso’ family, Michelangelo’s David - “to touch is to give life.” And I found myself thinking about a ‘60 minutes’ I once saw. About babies in understaffed Romanian orphanages who stopped growing, functioning. Couldn’t seem to achieve the milestones they were (beat) meant to.

You see, Karen across from me is a toucher. She does it well, sort of noticeably but not. But I notice. I always notice when she swivels her chair around the partition and asks about the weekend or how a file’s progressing, always with a perceptible touch to the arm or elbow. Once the back. Her strokes provide just the right amount of pressure so that I know I’m actually there, and not just about to float away into the ether.

Business as usual, comes the daily memo. Full steam ahead. Productivity is at an all-time high and who knew so many costs could be saved from working at home. This could in fact be a good thing, a blessing in disguise. Seeds are being planted; why would we want to rush back to the way things were? Who needs the water cooler when you have your own kitchen! Hours lost in the afternoon to the shovelling of cake – let’s face it with a staff our size, it’s always going to be someone’s birthday! There’s nothing we can’t do remotely - finally the ‘flexibility’ offered, of which you crave.

I still lay my clothes out the night before; iron my five shirts on a Sunday. Alternate the suit skirt and trousers, my kitten heels and ankle boots. Of course, I do not need to do that part. That’s the joke isn’t it – business as usual from the top up, like a newsreader. I may have laughed the first time it was said. It’s nice to see Karen on Teams, but she’s different somehow without the strokes. Stripped down. Exposed. Bare. Merely a talking head.

I went to Friday night zoom drinks last week. My first time. When do you talk when do you listen; how do you tell? To mute or not to mute? Thought I was adequately late, but when I went to join, got a ‘please wait, the meeting host will let you in soon’ message, so I walked the perimeter of the apartment three times. 473 steps in all. It was enjoyable to see the different backgrounds people had chosen but 15 minutes seemed adequate. These were just people I

Flesh | LUCY COMBE (continued)

happened to do the same thing as for nine hours a day. It’s not as though we pace the same floor or share cutlery. An end of week terminated by the click of a red button rather than a tipsy peck on the cheek and flesh pressed against one another. And as I sit for a time after, watching the blank screen, I find myself stroking my arm gently until I settle upon just the right level of pressure.

Gone is gone | JANIS BALODIS

An old man. Speaks with an accent. Pragmatic. Requires a droll delivery.

Somebody come last night steal the dog. Bloody bastards just take. Dolly was on chain like every night. We watch TV like always. Can’t go nowhere. I clip hers on chain same like every night. Dolly is old, got the heartworm. She stay home, chain, no chain, no difference. Long chain, six metre. Alvina buy special so dog can go whole patio end from end. I hear from bedroom when chain is drag on tiles rattle-rattle. I hear how he goes from chair down to mat, chase toads from dog-biscuits. Last night, nothing. No rattle-rattle, no bark. This morning I wake same time like usually, put on jug, everything quiet. Look to screen door, no Dolly. Look outside. Chain is stretch along patio, collar still on end looks like broken. No dog. I call, I walk all round garden, look under house. Nothing. I look again. Collar is not break, is undo. Unbelievable. Some bastard take. I check on road just in case. Is dead-end street, so never much traffics. Walk up and down, I don’t find live or dead. I ask neighbours. Everyone stay home, talk inside doors, but no one sees anything. Ann says snake maybe takes but Dolly is fat. Would need crocodile. If was snake, be catch on end of chain like big fat eel. Snake can’t undo collar. Dolly Alvina’s dog. She spoil. When Alvina gone I feed exactly same. I spoil. Sorry Alvina. I think maybe phone police but what they can do? Only a dog. Why she not bark? Always when stranger comes Dolly barks. Dead I can understand. Why someone takes now? Not for eat. Many people is lonely. I sit on patio, smoke cigarette. I wait, but gone is gone. Alvina is gone, she leave Dolly. Dolly is gone. She leave the collar. I know she won’t come. Peter, Astrid, Victor, Eva, Ken, stop, stop, stop. All dead, years and years but I wait, sit in dark with a stubbie, with Dolly. [Shouts] “Come on, come and fix the bloody Lotto numbers!” Sometimes I think, “Where they are? I want to find them.” Gone is gone. My hand shake. Biggest shock always is see how little is we leave behind. Bit of smell, feel bit heartache, remember little things. Less and less all the time. Nothing going on. Stay home. Wait.

The Fall | SUZIE MILLER

JESS: artist: 40s: In her painting studio and painting overalls.

At first it was quite brilliant, a sort of secret six months off; Autumn. The Fall.

I could catch up a bit Be a great mum, cook more, love harder, paint more, less chat, less social stress, more boxes sorted, establish a routine of walking the dog, eating, working. More fucking, more everything.

A famous musician friend from London decides he will email a music track a day, to reach us all in isolation. Connect us.

We are ‘all in this together’. We all belong.

I join a neighbourhood group app. Share information about where to buy flour. Stand in my driveway on Anzac Day, at dawn, with a candle.

I hear birds in the morning, no planes or traffic to disrupt them.

Calm.

No FOMO while I languish at home because nothing is happening.

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The Fall | SUZIE MILLER (continued)

Board games are played. I consider a neighbour’s offer to share his sourdough starter, But then .. pah. I plant herbs. Unpack old boxes, find small treasures each with a story.

Watch a TV show about people watching TV shows. Laughing at what we had become.

I watch a new release film, right there in my living room. Make popcorn and a homemade choc top. Bag of Maltesers. Facebook about it.

At first it felt quite the balm.

At first.

Then it just happened. Not a physical fall. Nothing literal.

Just this strange dive. Frantically trying to figure out which way is up. And down. And night. And day.

I watch a series about innocent people on death row. Thirty years spent in a tiny cell, then on one random day they get to walk free.

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The Fall | SUZIE MILLER (continued)

For me it was the doubt that started to creep in.

Yet it started quite unusually.

The old dog pissing on the sofa. A memory. A dagger to the heart. A 4am panic attack.

And then it was ON.

A sense of impending doom.

I watch a documentary about elephants but when a baby elephant is left behind I have to change the channel.

I think about who would be there at my side on my death bed, who would stroke the hair from my face.

This new fall is not about the virus because the virus is the new normal.

I want to strangle time freeze the moment and dissect it so that I know it. So that I can still boil the kettle, cook fish fingers, find the Band Aids.

Because suddenly I am in the shoes of another woman.

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The Fall | SUZIE MILLER (continued)

Someone who I don't know. This new woman, who are you? WHO ARE YOU?

I turn off the news about nursing homes. And covid. Vacantly stream a reality show about how the exceptionally rich throw parties for their toddlers. Extravagance. For what reason? Because they can. Because the toddlers deserve it.

Reading through old diaries, hours, weeks, years of writing. Exquisite sentences, heartbroken laments. I like her. She was warm and gracious. No bitterness just vulnerability. And such an appetite.

Dived into sex, life, love, passion, politics, music, art, adventure

How do I find the me in me? The her in me? The person who wrote all those diaries.

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The Fall | SUZIE MILLER (continued)

I watch a show about building a house from sandstone. A beautiful house with a singing tower.

An opera singer lives there, she walks up the spiral stair case, stands at the tower and sends her powerful voice over the vineyards. Lush grape-laden vines.

They said that the house was built to outlive those who built it. To be rediscovered in years to come by new inhabitants.

My childhood house was demolished in a day and rebuilt into a block of flats in under a month. Who will find the time capsule I buried under the shed?

I see a TV show about young lovers that runs for hours, I watch it until there is no more. It is 5.30 am I am sick with jetlag that is not even jetlag because there are no longer any jets.

I climb the stairs to bed and as the morning birds start to sing I put ear plugs in my ears and turn morning into night.

It feels that in isolation things don't grow. The herbs lasted for the first three weeks. The neighbours sourdough starter died a bored death. My musician friend sending a song a day reached his 53rd offering and stopped.

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The Fall | SUZIE MILLER (continued)

My boxes of things to sort are all sorted. My mother’s left over papers, my father’s certificates and letters. And my childhood memories, my children’s childhood memories. All the boxes are sorted.

What to do with them?

And that house built from sandstone. Will it be weathered to the ground?

Or maybe a century from now it will be inspected by a young woman with the voice of an angel. There will be a moment. A connection.

She will climb the stairs to the song tower, made of wood sourced from the local area, decaying now. She will step into the song tower, open the cracked window, push her face through see the long dead vines below. Pause. And sing them into life again.

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2020:232 Years | KYLIE COOLWELL

No, I am not feeling it… I don’t feel your talking to me when you say that we are… All in this together… I’m not one of those lucky Australians so when I hear ad nauseam… That, we are all in this together… I want to throw a brick at my TV… Except I usually don’t have a brick beside me and I paid a grand for my TV and I can’t afford another one so instead I seethe… But that’s not the worst one. What really gets me mad is the… We are going through unprecedented times… Ha? Are you for real? Unprecedented? Once again the story of this country is told through the prism of white privilege! The Gadigal people were nearly wiped out because of the smallpox virus brought by the first fleet. Little glass jars filled with a virus of destruction… Unleashed upon my people… An act of biological warfare, that spread like wildfire, from tribe to tribe and killed us in the thousands. Their suffering is in my DNA because I was born with the virus… The virus of colonisation… The virus of genocide that has bounced from generation to generation… Can’t leave your house for 3 months? Imagine not being able to leave the mission without a pass for years and years… Social distancing? We know all about that too… Sitting on a full bus, every seat taken except the one next to you. Trying to hail a cab to get to the airport and no cab will pick you up. (Love Uber) Living in a suburb that was once a blackout and is now becoming inhabited by stuck up white people, who look at us as like we carry the disease… the houso disease. I wish it were contagious. No, we don’t own our homes no doubt bought by Mr and Mrs White privileged parents. Fuck you and yeah I’m glad youse are keeping your distance… I just wish it were from Paddington and not Redfern…. Yeah, virus’s are nothing new to us… if you’re born a first nations person in this supposedly wealthy country. Statistically, the odds are stacked against you and you will be fighting all your life to stay alive and not let the virus of Colonisation with its institutionalised racism embedded in our society, beat you down… I want to have hope I want to believe but I’m not going to pretend that we are all in this together because we are not. I don’t belong to the great Australian dream. I belong to the fissures and cracks of rebellion and resilience and that is my vaccine.

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The Bravest Thing I Ever Did | NATHAN MAYNARD

Lads, come and sit down over there for a minute. I have a quick yarn for ya’s. It won’t take long, I promise.

1937 and I was the talk of the town. I had just thrown a dozen eggs at Mr Hardy’s car. Hardy was a wife beater. Everyone knew he bashed Mrs Hardy but nobody did anything about it. Because he was a big mean bastard. Nobody wanted to pick that fight. But Mrs Hardy, was always very kind to me, so I defended her honour in my own special way.

Up until Changi, egging that car, was the bravest thing I had done. The bravest thing I thought I’d ever do. For me, enlisting wasn’t a brave act. It was a foolish naïve act from a teenager who only wanted to do what my mates were doing. I learnt what real bravery was about after I enlisted.

At Changi I lost half of my body weight and had the figure of a wet Chihuahua. And I had watched two of those mates I followed to war, die. Have you ever watched someone die from starvation? Dry reaching every half hour and hoping you don’t break a rib while you do.

I can tell you it’s an agonising way to go out. I know because I was on the a few grains of rice short from going out that way myself. This particular day though, my last true friend inside was scrubbing the floor of our hut. The thing about your stomach when it’s shrunken, when you eat something, it wants to shit it out directly. I’ll never forget the shame in my mate’s eye that day. Here was one the toughest and proudest bloke I knew, on all fours, scrubbing his shit off a Japanese prison floor.

And if that moment wasn’t demoralising enough. A guard who was wasn’t watching where he was walking, managed to get shit on his boot. Angrily, he stopped and put his boot in my mate’s face “Taberu” he screamed. Which meant eat. My mate looked up at the soldier and shook his head.

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The Bravest Thing I Ever Did | NATHAN MAYNARD (continued)

Bang! A blow to the ribs with his baton. He screamed again “Taberu” and again my mate shook his head.

Bang! Another blow with the baton, this time to the back. Dropping him completely to the floor. His face and body landing in the puddle of water and shit. My mate, in some real pain, took his time to get up but I could tell by the look in his eyes, he was willing to die before losing anymore pride. He wasn’t eating that shit.

“Taberu” the soldier screamed. This time raising his baton in the air as high as he could. This next blow was going to kill him.

But my mate, smiled, looked the soldier in the eye and shook his head. And that my young friends, is when I did the bravest thing I ever did. I ate the shit. In order to save my mates life, I ate shit the shit from that soldiers boot.

And, you little pricks, are telling me you can’t stay inside a little bit longer, in order to save our lives?

Now fuck off home and keep Isolating you little twerps. And down the track, If I ever see ya’s in an RSL, I’ll slap those southern cross tattoos off your bloody necks.

The blackfellas are right…For you lot, Anzac day is just another excuse for a piss up. You’re not patriotic, you’re alcoholic.

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Unconditional Love | MATT HAWKINS

My father. I was going to call him.

He’s out there. Ten thousand miles away. In New York. He was happy. He was healthy. He worked at the New Rasta café. West 141st Street. That’s what my dad did. He worked at a café, ten thousand miles away. He still loves me. And I love him. Unconditional love. That’s what he gives me. Flesh and blood. From ten thousand miles away.

It’s OK. It’s not unusual. It’s the norm. When you’re part of the diaspora, sometimes you just can’t stop diasporing. My mother is in Melbourne, my sister lives in Vienna, my brother’s in Johannesburg and my father is in New York. I live in Port Augusta. I drew the short straw. That’s what I thought.

But, hey, let me tell you about Carol Kennedy. Carol Kennedy comes from New Jersey. She’s a go getta, she’s an entrepreneur, she has a unique eye for popular fashion, she knows a market when she sees one. She’s an icon of success.

She had an idea. She’s only ever had one idea. She found a picture of Bob Marley on the internet. She turned the picture into a black silhouette and then printed it on a yellow canvas tote bag. Simple, striking, Rasta, but NOT. She had never listened to Bob Marley, didn’t know who he really was, she just liked his silhouette.

And so did other people. Particularly the Japanese. So, she sold millions of tote bags to Japan. But that’s not enough. That is never enough. She went to Hong Kong, she went to Singapore, she went to Seoul…everywhere she went, people bought the bag. Shopping mall after shopping mall, airport after airport. Around and around and around.

She made them cheap in a factory in Wuhan. Cost price 75 cents, retail price $10. Cha ching! And everybody was a winner. Her mama got a Cadillac and dozens of Chinese grandmas could put their kids through school.

And then the PLAGUE CAME DOWN… when a Japanese tourist in Wuhan bought a chicken, ate some sushi, saw a prostitute, who went to the market and coughed on some beans, that were

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Unconditional Love | MATT HAWKINS (continued)

bought by a chef in a five-star restaurant in a five-star hotel who served them up to a Taiwan businessman who sneezed all over a…

Russian oil magnate who kissed his New Jersey girlfriend whose name was…

Carol Kennedy… who took the flight to New York where she went straight to the New Rasta café to drink the coffee and bagels served by my dad.

Oh, I can see him flirting with her, this girl, this Carol Kennedy, this pretty white entrepreneur that’s half his fucking age and she smiles and she flirts, and she travels with that pretty smile and that faceless, eyeless, blind, black silhouette of Bob Marley printed on a yellow canvas tote bag and she touched him. She touched him and passed the plague on to him. Not a young, strong woman, but a frail, old man.

We are a scattered family. A micro diaspora. It’s normal. It happens. My mother lives in Sydney, my sister in Cape Town, my brother in Berlin and my father now lives and dies in Calvary Hospital, Brooklyn, New York.

I was going to call him.

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Second Coming | TARIRO MAVONDO

It was my fault. I created the virus. I know people say it started somewhere in China — but that’s not true. I kinda feel crap that people think that, when I know that I created it. Mum, please don’t be mad at me. Shit. I only created the virus so it could kill only black people! Fuck! I thought killing everyone that reminded me of him...well then maybe the pain would stop. Uh... but then things got a little outta control coz it sorta started goin’ after white cunts too... and now I’m real scared that I created sumthin that’s comin’ for you and that’s gonna kill ya. Here I was tryna be uh... um... what’s the word? ... exquisite… an exquisite flame... but I ended up being like a friggin candle burning from both ends... two left feet dancin’... looking real fuckin’ stupid coz I created sumthin’ I can’t... Mum remember when I was real little how you used to put me in the baby seat and drive the old beat up Datsun around the block playing that same song on the cassette player coz that was the only way I’d sleep? Do you remember what that song was? Fuck! Why does my friggin head feel like it’s made outta a Woollies plastic bag with rocks moving inside? Mum, do ya mind if I smoke? I can’t breathe. (Beat) Do you ever feel like every motherfucker is a wave in the ocean and you’re moving in the opposite direction stuck in friggin piss warm water and no matter how hard you try you can’t join the ocean. Fuck! I burnt my little finger with the cigarette! (Beat) Mum why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me he didn’t want nuthin’ to do with me when not wantin’ me had everything to do with YOU? HE treated me like I was a motherfuckin’ black prince- BLACK JESUS he called me. Whenever you ALLOWED him to see me I felt like I was one of ‘em make a wish kids- y’know at the children’s hospital dying of cancer or some shit. He’d buy me heaps of shiny shit and invite his black family over who would fawn over me. I felt like it was my second coming like I had the motherfuckin’ power to walk on water!

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Second Coming | TARIRO MAVONDO (continued)

(Beat) Why didn’t you see me when I was inside? Why didn’t y’think maybe a phone call from my mother would mean the goddamn world to me, when all I got was walls closing in on me, collapsing on the tops of my lungs? He stopped visiting me in my dreams y’know coz I stopped dreamin’, I guess. I reckon the anti-depressants got me sleeping but they stopped me dreamin’. (Beat) I met someone…while I’ve been out. She’s real pretty like the sun in the late afternoon draping light on all them big city windows on them tall empty buildings. Normally I don’t kiss chicks on the mouth... but with this one... she reached into the depths of me and I know this sounds wanky and lame... but she touched the closet thing in me to resemble hope...it’s funny how everyone is scared of getting close to each other and here I was being touched like I was a precious flower. My cock went soft...she didn’t laugh at me... she held me while she palmed my tsunami of sadness with her Tim Tam hands as I cried. Jesus. That’s the first time I’ve cried since he died. With her I cried- angry tears, she asked me what my dreams were and I told her cunts like me can’t afford to dream. (Beat) Mum if you can look me in the eyes and tell me you love me... if you can tell me that I am your son… I fucking swear, I’ll hand myself in. Mum can you tell me you love me? MUM TELL ME YOU FUCKING LOVE ME! Mum Mum Mum…

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The time before the time to come. | KAMARRA BELL-WYKES

(Notes to actor: There is a specific rhythm to this piece that requires an honouring of the sentences and commas and the deliberate “mistakes” in grammar, punctuation and spelling.)

You never know when this time, could be the last time, in this time, before the time to come. So if you’re going to do it, you better do it right, you better make it a good one.

In the now time, in the here place, where happens aren’t yet happenc’d and experiences not yet signified, where artefacts wait to be actualised, we can never really grasp the passing of time, not until its done. A distant view only visible through hindsight’s 2020 lens, when the present becomes the past but before you know the future’s begun.

But sometimes, maybe one time, if you’re lucky enough, maybe once in your lifetime, you’ll know it, while you’re in it.

Plans made, dates saved, invites extended. Abracadabra! Come congregate, Kzam’s 40th cycle around the sun! Let’s revel and rebel and celebrate! The best is yet to come!

7pm, Friday the 13th March, the day after my birthday, the last night before it was too late, before there was nothing left to celebrate. Two storms loomed on the horizon, one made of clashing weather patterns, the other a shit storm named Corona. But neither growing pandemic panic or toilet paper hysteria could put a stop to this one. The best laid plans of woman and friends.

Those nearest and dearest braved the forces, air thick with electrical tension. Sparks of pressure flying off from the verge of something different, the brink of something big, when you catch yourself standing on the crest of change and all there is left to do is bend your knees, find your balance and lean in.

The feeling you get when it’s all or nothing, neck deep, sky high, locked, loaded, and calibrated. The certainty that this night, is gonna be a great one.

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The time before the time to come. | KAMARRA BELL-WYKES (continued)

Guests arrive offering birthday salutations, baring crisis-themed gifts. A disgruntled freebie scored at the local bottle-o; a Corona-branded water bottle along with free sarcastic insight “well nobody wants this one”. We delight in its decorative design; a lone figure gazing at the horizon from an empty beach. Avoid romanticised nostalgia by one-upping each other’s one liners: “Corona, when you want the beach to yourself.” “Corona, for those who to like to drink alone.” Not ready to acknowledge the edge of grief that creeps around us, ignore the inkling of sadness, as simpler times slip away. There are some things too soon to say. Not yet, not tonight, lets make believe together, for a little more while, for one more moment, one more day. One thing’s for sure, the future’s uncertain, except the inevitable, reoccurring, re- emergence, the unfolding of the infinite, born again to rebirth the reborn, this endlessness of waves.

Old friends, first meetings, brief encounters, inter-staters and around the corner’ers. Willing accomplices, partners-in-crime, ride-or-die bad influencers, forever and always, newly- made, life-long friends.

Raised up glasses, locked in gazes, “To the last hurrah”, our new, latest, most favourite thing to say. Knowing toasts to lost youth un-savoured served only as a place-keeper; a celebratory catch phrase, a melancholy salutation, to the end of an era, cheered across the blurry line of tomorrow becoming today.

Unknowingly eternally bound, co-creators of a soon-to-be-memory, the first and last time we would ever be together again, like this, in this way, in this time, before the time to come. These kind of connections, profound and fleeting in the liberating freedom that comes from the knowing you may well never see each other again. Drinkers and dancers, smokers and jokers, teasers and pokers, confessors and resolvers, perfectly synced to the bass drop of change. “You’ll know it when it comes.”

Unprecedented proceedings prompt intoxicated performance, as these types of parties so often do. Stuffed animals, puppets and masks join in ceremonious revelations.

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The time before the time to come. | KAMARRA BELL-WYKES (continued)

Costumes adorned, posed photos filter through unconsciousness.

The moon crosses the sky, the sun begins its rise, a few slept, most didn’t, kept alive by the desperate hope, it can’t come if we don’t close our eyes.

But endings always arrive right on time, just before the beginning has begun. You can’t escape the unescapable and the truth can never be undone.

Artefacts of kissed goodbyes and uninhibited embraces, that only existed in a time before the time to come.

The time before this one.

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The Epidemy of our Time | FUTURE D. FIDEL

Good morning my darling! I hear her sweet voice crackling through the frames of her sliding door. Her precisely measured footsteps get louder as they touch down the pavement of the hallway. She approaches and stretches her hands, hanging under her night gown. Rise n’ Shine my darling! I’ll rise, but I definitely won’t shine, my shire runs closer to the edge. She folds her hands and closes her eyes to recite her prayer like a gale. Dear God, bless all the Kings and Queens of this Nation. Black and white, yellow and brown, and every other color in between. She believes in God. She also believes in people. The daughter of a nation, the mother of a civilization. Her kings taught her life. Laugh while you can, thorns penetrate through thick blood and hard bones. She hears the same voices every night. She pushes them deep down but slowly eat her alive. She still remembers the wounds from January 26th. She hears the sounds of broken daughters and slaughtered sons. The sounds of broken homes, the sounds of all children of the nation who call this place home. Home is where you find peace and you give me that, so I thank you! She hears the voices of her king. She watched him beaten down, pushed down the drain and drained his lungs to death. She carries the scars of her children. Her Grand Children and her great-great-great-grandchildren. She begs for mercy to a people that feed her poison, but she manages to revive. She still manages to smile and nod her head. “G’day mate!” even in her Black Summer, she still shows me love. She shows me courage, she’s strong. Stronger than every other woman, she’s the mother of a civilization. Every contentious is a torment she’s destined to carry on her shoulders. Every sunrise rises with surprises. It’s no surprise she still stays strong. Rise n’ shine my darling. She’s teaching her children love and pride and more love, she says

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The Epidemy of our Time | FUTURE D. FIDEL (continued)

“we are one, even though we are many from all the lands we come” Together we stand. She believes God. She also believes in her children. Those who take off their suits to put on a harness when fire suffocates our precious yards. All of her children who take off their expensive sneakers for steel caps when water runs loose. Rise n’ shine my darling! You’ve never looked so beautiful She kisses my forehead and heads out to another test. This time, she has more children behind her, holding her hand. This time, she has me, because “We are one” and together we stand!

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There is the Light | RICHARD FRANKLAND

There is the light Far off But closer than it was

We have stood together We have lost and won together We have risen together Against the impossible

Rise up The fight is not yet over

We must rally again

Rise up

We have staved off this darkness But it lingers still It waits And can strike again If we are not vigilant If we do not take care Of each other Of ourselves

Rise up Rally again

There is much work to do We must build a tomorrow Australia We must reshape a new world A new way

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There is the Light | RICHARD FRANKLAND (continued)

We must discover new and better ways There is the light Closer than it was The light is the hope of a new way A new beginning A new life for us all The light is us together Together, we shine

Rise up There is the light Rise up

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PLAYWRITING AUSTRALIA IS ASSISTED BY THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, ITS ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY.

Playwriting Australia acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Owners of the lands where we live and create. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture, and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and future.

AUSTRALIAN PLAYS IS ASSISTED BY THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, ITS ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY.

Australian Plays acknowledges First Nations people as the custodians of Australia and its territories. We honour their living culture and their continuing relationship with this land.