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Tragedy is an incident, comedy will be our landscape.
Somewhere in a busy city, a man wakes to discover he has forgotten his life. He has no memory of the past and no clear sense of the present.
He is concussed. Or so he is told by a doctor—who may also be his partner. Now there are flashes of something. Hunger, mourning, sexual appetite... Bob Dylan? But why isn’t he in hospital? And what of the voices, the Blackberry, the brothers? The hammer?
A comedy with attitude, Concussion explodes a simple conceit and scatters its achingly funny and filthy tales of the city like shrapnel.
"Mueller is surely one of the most intelligent, formally adventurous and emotionally brave playwrights now writing in this country." - Theatre Notes
Concussion was first produced by Sydney Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre Company at Wharf 2 Theatre, Sydney, in 2009.
Ross Mueller won the New York New Dramatists' Playwright Exchange Award in 2008 for Concussion.
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Female | 30s | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 2
EXTRACT: This is not going to be another tragedy. I’m sorry but I don’t want to see that and you don’t want to see that. I am not going to sit back and watch while our lives unravel into a suspended world of disbelief. I know this is hard to understand but, (stay with me here) I accept responsibility for our rejuvenation. Yes!... We still have a window of opportunity - a chance for change - we can become a Comedy! A wonderful – racy romp! A sexy smiling romance. Vivid - stupid - contagious and we can and we will and we must - reinvent ourselves if we are going to survive.
Gender Unspecified | Teen | 3 to 5 minutes
Starts on page 35
EXTRACT: I got out of bed and I wrote what I’ve been dreaming. You and me - and I’m whacking it in fast – the greatest fellatio fantasy - straight into my blog – straight out of my head – first drafted - unedited– I’m standing naked in my bedroom at the keyboard - I am standing up - because I can’t fit my dick under the desk - I have to stand up and type because this dream of you has made my cock so enormous. It’s bouncing to the rhythm – it’s getting in the way and I’m writing what you’re doing to me and I’m getting harder and harder and every syllable is sexy, every word is full of fuck and I have to concentrate so I can write it and it’s so real, it’s an actual sensation - I can feel your lips and your tongue and I have this fifteen inch hammer of an erection and I get to the end of the fantasy and I upload the short story and I scamper to the bathroom and I lock the door and I see my cock in the mirror and even I am impressed with what stands here before me.
Adult language, Adult themesFemale | 30s | Unspecified
Starts on page 52
EXTRACT: I was sucking my own cock this morning. ///Really/// well too. Not politely, but ///really/// doing an excellent job. I woke up alone in bed – cumming. I had been dreaming that I was naked and somebody who looked like me was sucking my cock and the two mental states overlapped for a moment and the dream came into my bed. Literally. But I don’t have a cock. I am a woman. Most women I know don’t have penises or the time and the flexibility to suck their own cocks.
Adult language, Adult themes///"It's really about what it takes to be good when you're living in the city nowadays,"/// Mueller says./// "It's harder to take a moral stand these days than it is to be disinterested or uninvolved or unaffected."///
///"CONCUSSION IS A VERY GOOD PLAY"/// . Kevin Jackson, 2009.
///"It’s funny, it’s explicit, and for 80 minutes or so, you’ll need your wits about you."/// Jason Blake, 2009.
Lyn Gallacher interviews Ross Mueller
Photos: Olivia Martin-McGuire. Griffin Theatre Company & Sydney Theatre Company 2009.
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