Director's Notes

(Amy Ingram)

Author's Notes

(Patrick Carr)

In life we seem to be ruled by our relationships, having them or not having them can for some people become their whole existence. Our relationships with our friends, parents, lovers, work colleagues all help define who we are. They can change our behaviour, our view on the world; even change what we want out of life. This whole dynamic of how we are with others and how those people shape us is something I wanted to draw out in Lexie Turns to Stone. The relationships within this play are constantly shifting and evolving even to the point where some characters loose a sense of who they are. They form new ideas that come with new alliances, they do thing perhaps usually out of the ordinary for them. As people we move and change on a daily basis, but some days, well we do more than others. This play show’s how one person or one event can change the lives of those around in ways never expected. It looks at the choices we make in life and that sometimes you just don’t get what you wanted or even expected.

The Gold Coast is a strange place – built on a swamp where the cows used to get TB, the creeks were turned into intricate canals so everyone can have a water view, where every 30 or 40 years the runoff from rain in the hinterland meets a king tide and submerges schoolies’ paradise under two meters of water, where no tree is older than 30 years, where infrastructure is so overburdened and new ‘development’ so eagerly facilitated that a little rain sends sewage systems into reverse, where front doors have disappeared and you approach through the blind double doors of a multi car garage, where class doesn’t exist but size is everything, where the source of your wealth is irrelevant but the display of it essential, where money buys mates, influence, protection and anything else you want, where couples live in mansions needing full-time cleaners (and a pool man!), where they can moor their boat at the bottom of the garden, but if you stick your hand out the bathroom window, you can touch the house next door, where strangely pale Asians and pink-red poms lie about and swim at Surfers (the locals know better – it’s a dangerous beach), where black-beetle baristas from Melbourne are soon told ‘if I order a long black, fill the bloody cup’, where business is dying as even tourists desert the tawdry glitter, where the flash new developments of 30 years ago are turning into the decaying tat of today, baking under a sun so hot the steering wheel burns your hand if you park outside. But people keep moving there, escaping the cold, then secretly longing for it as they shelter in air conditioning, where children grow up but stay at home so they can afford their car, their weekend binges, and a range of handbags to match the colour of this week’s mobile phone. Everyone knocks the Gold Coast – but you don’t know if you haven’t tried it. It’s a lifestyle thing.

Poster

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