WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS?

DREAM-TOWN

You shouldn’t steal shoes off dead aliens, especially not if you’re a cop.

The NIDA production of Who’s afraid of the Working Class.

A celebrated Australian Play, WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS interweaves narrative strands with four plays – MONEY - Patricia Cornelius, TRASH -Andrew Bovell, SUIT - Christos Tsolkias, and DREAM-TOWN - Melissa Reeves. A composition by Irine Vela - REQUIEM runs through the piece. The play was written as a response to the vein of hopelessness running though Melbourne life, and the fractured apathy of progressive forces in the mid to late 1990’s. The stories are by turns penny-pinching, ugly, blackly humorous, and savage. 

DREAM-TOWN tells the story of two fifteen-year-old girls from the outer suburbs, Katina and Trisha, go on a shop-lifting expedition dressed up as private school girls, and get caught and taken to the police station. In a blackly comic hallucinatory story, we get a glimpse into the dreams and fears of these young women, in a world which is both heartbreakingly real, and also strange and fantastic. DREAM-TOWN also contains a monologue by Leon, a man has become obsessed by telling his story of hardship to radio talk-back.

PRODUCTIONS:

Melbourne Workers Theatre. 1999.

Directed by Julian Meyrick.

Nida – 2004, directed by John Sheedy.

AWARDS:

Won -

Queensland Premier’s Award

Jill Blewett Playwrights Award (South Australian Premier’s Award)

Australian Writers Guild Award for best new work and the major award

Victorian Greenroom Award for best new play

Photo – Viv Mehes

Cover photo. Glen Shea, Bruce Morgan, Maria Theodorakis, Eugenia Fragos, Daniela Farinacci, David Adamson in the Melbourne Workers Theatre Production of Who’s afraid of the Working Class. Photo – Viv Mehes

Daniela Farinacci and Maria Theodorakis in Who’s afraid of the Working Class? Photo - Viv Mehes

The script of Who’s afraid of the working class is published by Currency Press.

“This Who’s Afraid is a confronting and riveting sleight of hand, cutting and splicing together four writer’s scripts loaded with facts and metaphors of social disintegration into two close-to-seamless acts…In Melissa Reeves’ Dreamtown, Maria Theodorakis and Daniela Farinacci are spunky and wonderful as two Madonna-as-Kylie kids trying on slinky dresses and swigging bourbon in a fitting room. Their riotous lies and tough stance though, are useless when they are arrested for shoplifting.” Lee Christofis, The Age.

“The writing is rich, provocative and often poignant and the splendid ensemble plunge into the emotional pond with commitment. As Reeves’ shoplifters Daniela Farinacci, Maria Theodorakis are hilarious.” Kate Herbert.