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Brian and Wendy are going up.
Not in a vulgar way. It’s an ecological design, and soon they’ll be able to see out across the whole city. But there’s a crack growing in the wall and a foul stench seeping out. Worried about what the neighbours are saying they’ve invited everyone around for a BBQ to toast the future.
The past, however, has found its way onto the guest list.
As the old flames and rogue spirits of this prime neighbourhood come snooping around with a bottle of bubbles and yet another potato salad, the night comes completely off its hinges. Brian and Wendy must reconcile their middle class aspirations against war stories, comedic roasts, fallen stars and simmering libidos.
Dream Home is a penetrating and hysterical comedy about suburban life and the rude awakenings that come when you’re trying to hold it all together.
Written by Emilie Collyer (The Good Girl, Once Were Pirates) and shortlisted for both the Patrick White Award (2013) and Edward Albee Scholarship (2012), Dream Home received seven Green Room award nominations, winning best direction and best sound design.
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Female | 20s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 20
EXTRACT: Hi my name’s Elise, thanks for coming. Recently I decided to move back in with my parents. I know, right. I eat cheese. I also have this thing where I know that other girls are prettier than me. You know, I was never the pretty one. Talking about sex makes me feel weird. It’s weird right? So I make up words to talk about my vagina. So I caught my boyfriend cheating on me, well I didn’t catch him but I saw a text message on his phone to this girl and he finished it with xox
Adult themesMale | 40s | under 3 minutes
Starts on page 47
EXTRACT: But we can’t all fight. You know, there’s other ways, to contribute. Be a man. You get on. And you’re grateful, of course. And you’re out running. It’s so quiet. I mean there’s traffic, but no real noise. The whistle, I mean we’ve all seen that film, right, the one friend he’s running, sprinting to deliver the changed orders, but too late, the whistle. And up they go, up and over, running, all of them running. Not my story, I can’t imagine, I mean the blood and gore, the flies and dysentery and the trench foot.
Adult themes///Playwright Emilie Collyer's Dream Home is a funny, yet profoundly sad, new work. In some ways it feels like a spiritual inheritor to Patrick White's The Season at Sarsaparilla, sharply rendering contemporary anxieties; holding misanthropy and compassion in equipoise as it skewers, and finds unexpected poignancy in, our futile attempts to keep the Great Australian Emptiness at bay./// ★★★★ Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald.
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