True Stage Crime
Who says crime doesn’t pay? Two of my short plays – both with a strong crime theme – are due to be lovingly pummeled in the coming months.
The first, The Mercy Kitchen, is slated to be staged later this year as part of the Short & Sweet Fest in Melbourne. Winning a Wildcard berth, the piece will get its ten minutes of limelight as part of a Saturday matinee, possibly on December 20, at the Melbourne Arts Centre.
(If you haven’t been before, do. Every Short & Sweet session is a pig-out gorge of Quality Street choccies. Some pieces are nutty. Some fermented. Others will stick in your jaw for weeks.)
Andrea Cheung, the show’s director, is currently combing the city for a couple of cops and an elderly woman with a jagged little pill. Will keep you posted as we progress the Kitchen onto the Apron – as well as letting you know about time + place if you’re in reach of Melbourne.
The second caper is Snowtown, otherwise known as the bodies-in-the-barrels case that semi-shocked Australia in 1999. Only semi, as most of us have come to expect Adelaide to manufacture perversity on a casual basis.
Thirty minutes in length, this play (still in search of a title) is part of a commissioned ruckus of ten other scripts to be viewed by Newtown Theatre in Sydney, each one based on a true Australian crime.
Makes you wonder where other playwrights have wandered – the Shark Arm Murder? Peter Falconio? Last summer’s Gabba streaker? Part of the pleasure will be seeing the various treatments – with four plays eventually selected on a workshop weekend for further development, and an eventual season in early 2009. Again, will keep you various abettors informed.
Okay, so maybe crime doesn’t pay in filthy lucre. Not so far. But in terms of creative compensation, I’m in the black. (Loiter, and more grubby details are sure to come to light.)