First Seen 2017: Hired Mother

Hired Mother by Cathy Petocz                                       

Hired Mother is a surreal, near-future drama about fantasy, fetish, and mother-daughter relationships.

THE PLAY

It’s the moment. The daughter is approaching,  the mother stands to greet her. Something is wrong. The daughter stops just out of reach.  She is shaking, she is saying something that makes the mother very still.

The city of Canberra slows to a sinister halt as the cosmos rearranges itself in this new surreal, near-future drama. When a piece of moon rock witnesses the explosive break up between a mother and daughter, she propels herself to Earth to bring them back together. The moon rock ingénue hires the Mother to act out the mother-daughter lunch dates of her dreams while finding herself seduced into a secret love affair with the Daughter. She soon finds herself sabotaging the relationship she came to save so she can continue playing out her fantasies as lover and daughter. Blood is thicker than water, but when the tides are spilling over as the Moon approaches to punish her moon-shard daughter all sense of reality is swept away.

Cast:  Emma McManus, Isha Menon, Clare Moss, Nicky Tyndale-Biscoe

Director: Virginia Savage

Dramaturg: Peter Matheson

THE PLAYWRIGHT

Cathy Petocz  is a Canberra-based theatre practitioner – a playwright, director, performer, and musician. Cathy’s first major work as a playwright, Where I End & You Begin, was staged in partnership with The Street Theatre in 2014. She writes and directs digital theatre works, such as Insomniac Attack (Canberra Youth Theatre, 2012) and the immersive whodunnit Cloakroom (creative development supported by artsACT, 2015). Cathy also writes and devises performative music works such as the Judy Blume-themed girl band Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret which had sell-out shows at Canberra’s You Are Here festival in 2013 and Melbourne’s Emerging Writers‘ Festival in 2014, before releasing an EP with Cinnamon Records. She recently co-founded arts collective Coup: Canberra, and directed Coup’s first show, a production of Caryl Churchill's Vinegar Tom, featuring a line-up of live experimental music acts (Ainslie + Gorman Arts Centres' Ralph Indie Season, 2016).

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