'Two women, two plays, two powerful voices.
'This double volume pairs powerhouse playwright Patricia Cornelius, in collaboration with Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks, with rising star Benjamin Nichol in two searing monodramas about women who are dispossessed and dismissed.
'In RUNT, Cornelius, Dee and Wilks have created an expansive work about the runts of this world—the lesser, the weak, the insignificant, the 'unders'. Runt, a small woman who has endured nothing but misery, toughens up to face her oppressors and fight for equality and decency. But just as she starts to sense greatness rising in her, something shifts and she feels the dirt sucking her back in.
'[Cornelius's] art has a conscious rhythm, poetry and structure that make other writers seethe with envy. Her language doesn't sound naturalistic but when it's spoken by an actor, it sounds like it could never be anything but their voice.' —Time Out
'In kerosene, Nichol's unlikely protagonist Millie yearns for love and acceptance, finding instead rejection and humiliation at every turn … except from her sad, soft old grandfather, and her best friend Annie. Millie shapes her loyalty to Annie into a bond that burns hotter than any romantic furnace. Life sends them on different paths, but when Annie turns up bruised and bloodied on the doorstep, Millie sets out to honour her childhood friend in the only way she knows how: revenge.' (Publication summary)
'One small woman takes on the world.
'Following their incredibly successful and multi award-winning collaboration on SHIT, Susie Dee, Patricia Cornelius and Nicci Wilks have re-teamed to create RUNT, a play about the runts of the world: the lesser, the unwanted, the weak, those without clout, the insignificant; all the unders.
'Runt, a small undernourished woman has endured enough of the misery of being the runt of the litter. She toughens up and attempts to take power, to lead the oppressed, to rise up and fight, for equality, for decency and what’s right. She liberates sack after sack after sack of miserable runts. And she grows. She feels herself reaching eight foot or more. She gets a taste for what it means to be great. Trouble is, ‘greatness forgets runtness‘.' (Production summary)
'no matter the cost, no matter the consequence.
'“He’d been shoving her around for a while now. I knew that. Sometimes she’d tell me, sometimes not, but I could always tell when they’d had a blue. But she was my girl and sometimes things were better left unsaid.”
'Well-meaning, teenage misfit Millie comes home from work one day to discover her old childhood friend Annie bruised and bloody on her doorstep. Millie picks her up, dusts her off and puts her in the bath. Lying in bed together, the two reminisce on a childhood that occurred a lifetime ago and recall an old promise to care for one other “until the end of the earth, no matter the cost and no matter the consequence.” As Annie sleeps, Millie vows to honour her friend in the one way that seems fair; revenge.
'Set in the outskirts of metropolitan Melbourne, KEROSENE is a relentless and unsympathetic character study exploring the complex, ugly and dangerous symptoms of love. It is a homage to the blind loyalty that accompanies lifelong friendships and the realities of what it means to grow up young, quiet and forgotten in modern day Australia.'
Source: Theatre Works.
