– AN EXCLUSIVE UPDATE FROM STEPHEN, 25 MARCH 2025 –

Over the course of the last six months, we have been in development for Christos Tsiolkas and Dan Giovannoni’s new work Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. From early treatments to scene breakdowns and story maps, we have now arrived at a second draft which will be heading into further work-shopping in June 2025.

During development we have collaborated closely with South Australian music royalty Carla Lippis and Geoffrey Crowther (Mondo Psycho) to develop music for the work, combining their punk rock glamour with the nostalgia of 1980s electronica.

We have also had the pleasure of assembling an incredible group of actors to bring this motley crew of musos to life; including Jennifer Vuletic (Looking for Alibrandi), Katerina Kotsonis (Wentworth), Artemis Ioannides (Because The Night), Brigid Gallacher (Merciless Gods), Danny Ball (Loaded) and Carly Sheppard (A Nightime Travesty). These performers brought their voices to the table and helped shape the direction of the second draft, delving deeper into the relationship between migrant histories, music, and ambition.

During the development period, we also had the wonderful South Australian artists Alexis West and Kate Cheel of Australian Plays Transforms ‘Developing the Dramaturg’ program come to play and provide their insights and perspectives on the dramaturgy of the play. It was brilliant bringing all of these South Australian and Victorian artists into one room to explode creatively.

We cannot wait to share BOTH of these works with you in the future!

In the meantime, here is a little sneak peek into the script:

The Crystal Ballroom. 1982. There is the sound of a tram clanging up Fitzroy Street, the sound of shouts, laughter, pub conversation.  

The stage is dark, a gloom that is resonant of highly pixilated old-school black and white video. Four shadowy figures in the background.  

The sounds, shouts, then a moment of quiet. And then that insistent percussive metronymic beat that is about to change everyone’s world. Shouts, a scream. The four shadows of the musicians at their instruments, the intro to ‘New Orders’ Blue Monday’, being played live for the first time. 

A  young woman, a teenage girl really, leaps and the light catches her. She is dancing in a jerking, ugly but rhythmically intuitive manner, her jolting limbs blending the skinhead stomp and the punk po-going and the robotic control of disco. Her movement is ALL of that.  

And then, there is the sudden break in the performance, the beat slows for just a moment, the girl’s body shudders as if she has been shot by deliberate kicks of percussion: and then the music explodes. And her dance now is not the past but is the future.  

House and trance and rave are there now in her dance. The shadows too are dancing, no longer performers, they too are dancers. The music is loud, exhilarating, it is ecstasy.  

And then it suddenly stops.