THE RESISTIBLE DEATH AND RISE OF INES DE LA VERA
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SHORTLISTED
ALPINE INTERNATIONAL THEATRE PRIZE 2023
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Ines de la Vera is depressed. Vulnerable and isolated in a sea of memories and regrets, Ines decides it’s time to go down with the ship.
Decision percolating, Ines bubbles into action, googling killer cocktails and the high-end, end-it-all Swiss option. The suicide notion is like a seed germinating but seeds bring life and Ines, innervated by her first motivated actions in months is ironically starting to live. Days are suddenly full of lists, cleaning, farewell notes, there’s funeral garb to choose, hair and make-up—‘do I get my roots done?’, practicalities to confront—to burn or to rot? Resolve hardening like concrete, Ines is finally ready to hang up her N-95 and book that First Class, one-way, non-refundable ticket to Zurich when … an old, diabetic dog turns up on her doorstep.
Taking herself to Switzerland is an entirely different kettle of doggy-doo than taking the hound to be put down—he’s old, obese and incontinent—not exactly foster dog material. Murder-suicide is not what she signed up for. ‘A cat might simply eat me’ thinks Ines, ‘but a dog will pine, will whine’—not to mention his insulin … The thought of him alone and ill, shitting on her good shag-pile is worse than the thought of herself alone, whining and shitting on her life.
It turns out her new canine, Rex, has psychological issues too … for a start he speaks English. Rex has been around the block a few times—he’s wee-ed on a lot of property, tried to make friends—failed—gotten into countless scraps, both edible and violent, been abused, been used—he’s ready for a gentler life and he’s determined he’s found his forever home. Ines might not be the sparkiest human he’s encountered but she’s vulnerable and ripe for the picking.
Rex’s arrival violently bursts the manic bubble of Ines' death preparations shifting her focus from her classy suicide to the nitty gritty and often base needs of a foul-mouthed, vagabond dog who knows no shame. Rex’s problems rapidly overwhelm Ines’—lists are now filled with worm tablets, air freshener and doggy diabetes meds. There’s bad behaviour to rein in, shoes to replace, endless walkies, filthy, filthy jokes to be resisted, a million trips to the vet and balls to be lopped off—an incident that leads to Rex’s obsession with Castrati Opera and his unshakable belief in his own talent. Turns out he’s the perfect ‘therapy’ dog, except therapy for Rex means a cigarette, Ines' finest Single Malt and a reciprocal agreement—a home, treats and free rein over the couch and remote.
But just as Ines is starting to flourish, Rex is starting to die … or … perhaps Ines sees herself as an old, unlovable dog on its last legs? Perhaps Rex is her spirit animal, her animus, her broken self and Ines is astounded to realise that she can love him and let him go … You decide.
GOD IN SPACE
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NOMINATED
Silver Gull Awards, 2022.
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Three generations of women fight to reconnect in the time of COVID.
Synopsis
75-year-old Valery lives in a nursing home for dementia sufferers. She still has her mind, it’s just in pieces …. Old memories are the strongest and buried deep inside them is Valery’s darkest regret. As a very young mum, with a new baby and a four-year-old, Valery left her older daughter in the care of the Catholic Church.
Valery thinks the constant stream of visitors and staff in PPE are spacemen, come to colonise our ‘shitty planet’. Her younger daughter, Bel, visits every day but she is fading in her mother’s eyes, just another phantom in a face-mask, another space-person.
Bel’s life is further complicated by the actions of her partner, Leonard, a journalist investigating sex crimes in the Catholic Church. Months spent alone in ‘iso’ researching the dark side bring him too close to home and he is investigated for images found on his laptop. Exonerated, and desperate to get his ‘story’ back on track, he heads to Costa Rica where the old priest has been moved on by the Catholic Church. If he can interview the perpetrator and expose the church’s complicity, he will achieve redemption … or so he believes.
Stressed out by the constant vigilance and frustrations inherent in protecting her vulnerable mother from COVID and with her childless relationship breaking down, Bel reaches out to her long lost sister, Greta, and her 22-year-old daughter, Leila. It’s a case of careful what you wish for as Bel’s new-found family bring their own baggage and stress—Greta and Leila visit Valery in the nursing home, breaking protocols both pandemic and personal. Bel cannot protect her mother forever.
Old habits die hard and each character must decide whether they will take personal responsibility and adapt their behaviour for the greater good or find an excuse not to care and just move the problem on.
Finally, when Bel reaches out to her estranged niece, Leila, they both discover that connection has the power to transform judgement into understanding, gifting each a little hope amidst the stress and confusion.
VICTIM
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NOMINATED Silver Gull Playwriting Competition, NSW, 2020.
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Long listed Theatre 503 Playwriting Award 2020
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Waitlisted Montreal International Playwrights' Conference, 2020.
Synopsis
16 year old Sally is a child of the digital age, her young thumbs calloused by a million taps and swipes. She wants her actor father, Royce, to help with her yr.11 English assignment—she has to write a sonnet. But Royce has little time for his daughter, what with rehearsals, publicity, social commitments. Royce’s wife, Sally’s mum, always seems to be absent, hinting at a fractured marriage. Royce is one clever, charming handful who can’t see his daughter needs him.
In the theatre, Royce’s younger colleague Kelli looks up to him as a mentor and Royce happily and enthusiastically encourages her work and their friendship. He’s got famous friends and a million plays behind him and Kelli, a little in awe, is eager to learn. She soon feels out of her depth, however, and unsure as to the veracity of his advances, engages in banter, while carefully sidestepping, always trying to keep the ambiguous from becoming overt. Royce has few such qualms and continues to besiege her with charm and attention.
Royce and Kelli, have to share a live television publicity interview to promote their play and Kelli confides in Royce that she is nervous and anxious. Royce takes her under his wing, giving advice and boosting her confidence. When the interview takes place Royce is shocked to find he can hardly get a word in edgeways and worse, Kelli quotes the pearls of wisdom he had advised her with, without crediting him.
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Feeling his prodigy is becoming a little too independent, Royce starts to obsess and compete and turns his attentions up a notch or ten. When, in Kelli’s eyes he crosses the sexual harassment line, she goes to the press and agrees to a live interview with investigative journalist, Justine.The social media and press obsession soon spirals into a full blown feeding frenzy of finger pointing, social debate, retribution mongering, legal complexities and some pretty ugly-funny memes. Everyone has something to say and no-one can take anything back, it’s all over the net, all over the world in an instant. Forever.
Kelli finds herself riding the crest of change, the poster girl for the #metoo movement, but the hand that helped her, the press, proves to he an inconstant and dangerous ally. Kelli holds her ground, determined, but knows nothing will ever be the same—and that’s OK.
Royce, however, has been living in a house of cards. His days are done and his voice will never ring true for the punters again. Like most actors whose work is their heartbeat/identity/ego, Royce cannot locate a persona other than his actor-self and so fractures and crumbles. The pieces will never come back together.
While this debate rages, sixteen year old Sally, the person the #metoo movement is theoretically fighting to change the word for, spins silently out of control, ultimately falling on her sword in a YouTube bloodbath. Her public persona forever set in stone, she joins the ‘brackets after your name club’, forever (his daughter).
A victim of collateral damage.
REST
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PUBLISHED Australian Plays 2020 https://australianplays.org/playwright/ASC-4393
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NOMINATED Alpine Fellowship International Playwriting Competition 2020
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Shortlisted Darlinghurst Theatre Company 2019
The Play
When we make a decision, no matter how seemingly minor or innocuous, no matter how grand or profound, there is no turning back. We can attempt to qualify, amend, retrospectively smooth the edges, but history has been made and the only way is forward.
In a lonely place by the side of the moment, at the edge of possibility, two women facing a lifetime in the wrong groove, on the wrong team, try desperately to change course.
After an unexplained incident FIFI and CHERRY find themselves battered and bruised in a desert landscape. Neither seems sure how they got there or whether they should stay. An unknown force pulls them toward a void, a void which they instinctively sense has a one-way door.
As they contemplate their situation we learn that they are mother and daughter, but not in the simple sense. Just as they are beginning to reconnect their reverie is broken by the arrival of the mysterious Slade, who is also bruised and battered and seriously injured.
Gradually we discover our characters each inhabit a different pocket in time. Fifi, in that moment just after the heart stops beating, but the brain is still thinking; Cherry, before the heart stops beating and choice seems still possible and Slade, when death has been thwarted and survival is all.
The final image, a projection of a smoking car wreck, is the missing puzzle piece. Our three characters have been involved in an accident and Fifi, sick of the shit-hole paradigm she has been suffocating in all her life, has taken advantage of the situation and seized the opportunity to help Slade, her daughter’s abusive partner, into the afterlife.
Writer’s Note
Domestic violence has spiked dramatically during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Rest turns statistics into story, its desert locale more than a metaphor—remote, isolated, yet seemingly endless. As all three characters are tottering on the brink of their existence I’ve kept the conversation raw, visceral, intimate, and saved the backstory for the final image, which crystallises the last piece of the puzzle—the burning wreck of the car that brought them to this void in the desert and kicked them into their existential nightmare.
As Fifi hovers in the moment before death, she valiantly tries to influence her battered daughter’s trajectory, desperate that Cherry choose a different path to her own. All Fifi can do is sow the seed for change—her final, heroic act.
Exploring notions of the authentic self and personal responsibility, Rest is a play about change, about moving forward. It is poetic in that it doesn't attempt to localise its characters with recognisable circumstances or signal its topical themes. In the spirit of Beckett, it goes to the heart of who a person is regardless of their paradigm of culture and history and lets them speak their truth. They are of their time but at the same time they are eonian—eternally human, and in desperate need of each other.
We are inside a desert, inside a theatre, but ultimately inside the universe of the human mind—hilarious; heartbreaking; universally indigenous.