Doppelgängers, impersonators, and monstrous stand-ins. Canberra audiences are invited into the highly imaginative inside-out world of ACT playwright/theatre maker Cathy Petocz as she makes her professional writing debut with her strikingly unconventional first full-length play Where I End & You Begin.
Set in a multi-sensory double-universe containing a cornucopia of clues and characters Where I End & You Begin is an extravagant play where every element is excessive – the language echoes in and out of itself, sound, light and images are vital signs to the impossible mystery of self.
Light years apart, two private detectives investigate missing person cases: Polly is in a cafe interviewing a client who has been experiencing mysterious blanks ever since he met the girl of his dreams, and Whatshisname is tracking a missing woman in outer space. Somehow, a powerful connection draws them together. Their two worlds merge, sucking in three innocent bystanders and transforming into a single destructive unreality.
“I’m very interested in how people are themselves – how they decided on that and how they make it happen,” says Cathy Petocz. “I feel very conscious of my own multiplicity of selves and how I try different selves on, or how I look for my own doppelganger at parties, or read a Raymond Chandler novel to make myself more hardboiled.
“I started writing Where I End & You Begin the moment after a break up when I laughed and realised that laugh was not actually my own. It was the laugh of the person with whom I’d broken up, who’d broken my heart, and here he was laughing out of my own mouth. I wondered how much of myself was actually that person and how much of myself was embedded in him.”
Director Caroline Stacey will present the work with a giant catwalk setting creating a double audience for this double universe of two plays in the same space where everyone, including the audience, struggles to know where they end and someone else begins.
Where I End & You Begin was developed through The Street Theatre’s The Hive and First Seen programs over a four year period. The work was shortlisted for Playwriting Australia’s National Script Workshop 2013, and received Arts ACT project funding for the premiere season.
Director: Caroline Stacey Featuring: Raoul Craemer, Kate Hosking, Ylaria Rogers, Dylan Van Den Berg Scenic / Costume Designer: Imogen Keen Sound Designer: Kimmo Vennonen Lighting Designer: Gillian Schwab
Where I End & You Begin
The Street Theatre, 15 Childers Street, Canberra City West
Season: 18th – 26th October 2014
Bookings: (02) 6247 1223 or online at: www.thestreet.org.au
For more information, visit: www.thestreet.org.au for details.
Image: courtesy of The Street Theatre