GradFest 2023

Mud ‘Words change the nature of things. A thing not named and the same thing named are two different things’. When Mae steps out of her impoverished life to be educated, things fall into place around her for the first time. She is twenty-five, works hard and aspires to learn more. Discovering this new world encourages Mae to challenge her strange step-brother Lloyd. But when their erudite neighbour Henry enters the siblings' home, their already fragile equilibrium breaks down. Hungry Lori is a chef. Bex waits tables. One night in a walk-in fridge and the rest is history. Lori wants to teach Bex about the finer things in life, but what’s the point when the system is rigged? After all, no-one on minimum wage has headspace to make their own yoghurt. A blisteringly funny play about what we eat and who we love, exploring class, queerness, cultural appropriation and the cost of gentrification. Presented by arrangement with Nick Hern Books’. The Aliens “The state of just having lost something is like the most enlightened state in the world.” When Evan starts a summer job at a coffee shop in Vermont, he finds unlikely role models in idlers KJ and Jasper, who spend their days sitting out back. Evan soaks up their knowledge and stories about being in bands and writing novels, but the real learning starts when he begins to see what his new-found friends are really up against; what we’re all up against. The Sugar Wife “Captured at the height of [her] rage” To produce the sugar, to taste the sweetness, the essence needs to be pressed into existence. We press hard. The wheels turn, the cogs pull, the extraction process is complete: syrup, children, art, money, money, money, money, money, MONEY. Pressed, oppressed, the world is paved with sugarwives and those with whom they are caught in the industry of extraction. Life has never been full enough for those who want more.