Footscray playwright Laura Lethlean is returning to the Melbourne Fringe Festival after a nine-year gap.
Her new work ‘Pillow Fight’ will be featured in this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival at the Gasworks Arts Park from Tuesday, October 4 to Saturday, October 8, signifying a return to the festival since her debut work ‘Plastic Pacific’ graced the stage at The Substation in Newport in 2013.
Ms Lethlean said she wrote the first draft in 2019, but further development meetings over Zoom throughout the COVID-19 pandemic shaped the work into what it is today.
“The play looks at what happens to both the involved parties, when non-consenual sex takes place in the short term, and also in the long term,” she said.
“It’s about how we can so easily misinterpret each other.’
Ms Lethlean said the play focuses on Rob (Cameron Grant) and Hen (Monique Warren) who are unfolding the events of the previous night and delving into the complexities of consent and truth.
“It’s such a live animal,” she said.
Her long-term collaborator and co-founder of The Anchor theatre company Katie Cawthorne is the show’s director.
Another key collaborator for Ms Lethlean is her father Phillip Lethlean, who is the lighting designer for the show.
“If we didn’t have him to refer to, I think it would be a different play,” she said.
Details: melbournefringe.com.au/event/pillow-fight
Matthew Sims
