Three Of Australia's Most Promising Young Playwrights Join Forces For A Triple Bill Of Brand New Plays

With the assistance of a generous grant from the Seaborn Broughton & Walford Foundation, and following individual successes in their home cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Ang Collins (Blueberry Play), Fiona Spitzkowsky (Unicorn D*ck) and Lewis Treston (Reagan Kelly), three of Australia's leading young playwrights, have come together to create a new work for Meat Market Stables. These exciting young playwrights have collaborated on a triple bill of short plays, each of which confronts the anxieties, frustrations and insecurities of the "millennial" generation.

From overspending on superfluous homeware, inflating one's appearance on social media, and existential concerns about the future of the planet, DISPARATE SCENES FOR MILLENNIAL DREAMS aims to punch the zeitgeist squarely in the jaw.

Directed by Benjamin Sheen (A Little Bit Of Pain Never Hurt Anyone), produced and with dramaturgy by Thomas De Angelis (Chamber Pot Opera) and presented by Periscope Productions (Fireplace), DISPARATE SCENES FOR MILLENNIAL DREAMS introduces these fresh young playwrights to Melbourne audiences.

The idea for the show came from Sheen's desire to combine the creative minds of the three playwrights: "I'd always been interested in short plays, possibly because of my short attention span! So, we were keen to create something that dropped the audience into a world really quickly, and despite having little or no contact with each other, the writers came up with astoundingly interrelated plays. All three of the pieces explore the petty foibles of our generation, the loss of agency that we're feeling at the moment, and the sense of emptiness that comes from living amongst a late-capitalist, hypocritical and self-obsessed milieu. Sounds intense, but there's plenty of humour there too."

Playwright Ang Collins, in her piece Huge Indoor Plant Warehouse Sale has turned her trademark wit towards a new-fangled millennial obsession: indoor plants. "All of the anxieties, frustrations and insecurities of today's twentysomethings are being poured into the maintenance of indoor ferns and monsteras," Collins says. "Rather than settling down and saving for our first home, we're doting on fiddle leafs and it seems as though we're purposefully diverting our own attention away from more important things."

Playwright Lewis Treston has written the not-quite-love story of two cosplay enthusiasts who meet by chance in Osaka, Japan. The piece Condo Osaka devastatingly unpicks the sordid hypocrisies of our time: "I tried to tell the story of the loneliest Spiderman and nastiest Sailor Moon you've ever met. The whole thing is basically a dance between two men who aren't at all forthcoming about who they really are and what they're really up to."

Playwright Fiona Spitzkowsky's piece Dawn Chorus in A Minor weaves around the other two plays, as two young people wait for salvation in a warehouse-turned-gallery. They huddle in the air-conditioning, sheltering from the now oppressive heat wrought by human induced climate change. Spitzkowsky says "For me, this was an opportunity to explore how the power structures that currently define our personal and political relationships might survive and thrive in the coming climate catastrophe. What are we willing to conserve in the name of self-preservation?"

Opening on Friday 31 May, at Meat Market Stables, DISPARATE SCENES FOR MILLENNIAL DREAMS is set to delight, surprise and engage young audiences - and perhaps infuriate older ones - and is a brilliant collaboration between some of Australian theatre's most important movers and shakers.

Bookings: https://www.ticketebo.com.au/millennialdreams

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