REFRACTIONS AND FORGET ME NOT Double Up

REFRACTIONS AND

FORGET ME NOT

Double Up

Refractions and Forget Me Not are on at the Deckchair Theatre at 179 High Street in Fremantle, from Monday, October 26, ’til Friday, November 6. Bookings can be made through Deckchair on (08) 9430 4771.

Known around town as man with a sharp wit and a well-tuned sense of humour, writer Damon Lockwood is often associated with comedic productions, but in 2009, Longwood Productions (a collaboration between Damon Lockwood and Sam Longley), will delve into more mellow waters, exploring serious issues in Deckchair’s double bill Refractions and Forget Me Not.

Lockwood explains that his move away from comedy wasn’t accidental, “I wanted to take a step into the serious world of drama but importantly, they’re very short plays – one is about 35 and the other 42 minutes. I don’t want people thinking it’s going to be one of those fucking epics that has everyone asking ‘Please God, when’s this going to end?!’. I think the greatest thing you can achieve with theatre writing is leaving the audience wanting more – I always have that in the back of my mind when I’m writing theatre.

“I’ve done it before but when I started to bore myself writing drama, I thought ‘no way I am going to subject an audience to watching this’, so the difference with these two is that I enjoyed it all the way through and I’m excited to present them to an audience.”

Though they’re presented in a double bill, Refractions and Forget Me Not each deal with separate, and very intimate issues, inspired from real events.

“Forget Me Not is based on a news report I saw about a man who got the disease that gives you cold sores on your mouth, and the disease loses its way and goes to his brain. He literally lost his memory overnight – he went to bed one night and then woke up and had a 30 second to one minute memory. Incredible stuff. He has memories of before it happened, so every time he sees the woman he was with, it’s like the first time he’s ever seen her again and he just gets incredibly excited and over-joyed even though it could have only been half an hour from when he saw her last.

“The other one is about an acquaint-ance of an acquaintance – I heard a story about a married man who had a gay lover of ten years, the whole time he’d been married – stuff like this goes on all the time.”

To complement the intimate nature of each of the play’s subject matter, Longwood Productions have used the space at Deckchair Theatre to bring the audience close to the actors, so that they can get caught up in the drama he explains, “It’s very intimate. The first play is set in a one room apartment and the other in a lounge room, so we really wanted to throw the audience right into the guts of it.”

Lockwood has teamed up with director Mark Storen for the double bill, citing his friendship and faith in Storen’s directing ability as the motivator behind his decision.

“He’s directed a couple of things of mine and we have a really good working relationship. We can be really honest with each other and still be friends. I can call him a bald dickhead and he can call me the same back!

“I believe that an artist’s greatest tool is humility and I know that when I show things to Mark and he has suggestions, and maybe it’s because we have a really good working relationship, but I know it’s based on trying to make the best production we can and it’s not personal or petty or anything like that.”

_EMMA BERGMEIER