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BODY FARM

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Members of a religious sect calling themselves “the family of the book” plan to
steal the corpses from a body farm — a forensic facility in which donated human bodies are left to deteriorate in the open in order to study decay — and give them a proper, religious burial.

One of the members of the family (4) recruits the sister (Sarah) of one of the bodies they intend to rescue, in order offer her the chance to say goodbye. An outsider to the religion, Sarah agrees to help out of her dissatisfaction with her brother’s death and choice of burial.

The family plans meticulously for several months, but on the night they actually attempt the heist nothing goes to plan. It is raining, members are late, in the wrong costume, there aren’t any olives to eat beforehand, etc.

When they actually arrive at the body farm the whole plan falls apart again. Police arrive and only a few members of the family, along with all the corpses, make it back to the hideout. There, they attempt to piece together what went wrong. Accusations fly, ethnic and political tensions flare up, and the carefully articulated veneer of the religion the family has created begins to crumble as the police close in and the circumstances through which the family has been betrayed become clear.

  • a darkly comic heist play
  • 80
  • 0 total
  • culturally and linguistically diverse
  • 18+
  • young adult, adult
  • Australian Script Centre


  • MONOLOGUES
  • PRODUCTION HISTORY

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5

Gender Unspecified | 20s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 64

EXTRACT: ...the Atheist's- they want us in here arguing semantics, picking the books apart as individuals rather than seeing them as the holy trilogy... They want us in here arguing which religion is the fucking Phantom Menace and which one is The Empire Strikes Back, rather than seeing that each film had its place in the whole story and that you can't just wipe Jar Jar Binks from history. The Gungans helped defeat the droid armies, and Leviticus says we can't have tattoos. We may not agree; it may not be plausible that bumbling swamp monsters would defeat an empire...

Adult language

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SKU: ASC-1982 Category:

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