FCA Performance presents

As I Lay Dreaming

Thursday 22 – Saturday 24 October at 8.15pm

Written and directed by Catherine McKinnon
A workshop production with 2nd year FCA Performance students

A group of friends gather at the river in memory of a friend who drowned there ten years earlier. They find the river is a meeting place: school kids are smoking stolen cigarettes; two men are waiting for their partner in crime; a lone footballer is looking for thrills; and two university mates indulge in a drinking bout. On this night too, a ghost walks the banks of the river, waiting for someone who will cross over from life to death.

Some of those gathered on the river’s banks meet up with strangers, others with friends, one with a ghost, but all feel the draw of the mysterious river. As the night unfolds each takes a step into the water.

Catherine McKinnon’s most recent play, As I Lay Dreaming, is a story about the awkwardness of new beginnings and the suddenness of endings, about love’s strange currents and the collision of the rational and the irrational, about the lies we tell and the fictions we create, and about how one small event can change the course of our lives forever.

In this workshop performance, the power struggles of everyday conversation, and the tiny lies buried within human relationships are laid bare. Starkly evocative, As I Lay Dreaming, uses music composed by Houston Dunleavy, lighting by Toby Knyvett, and the performers themselves, who bring to life - through vivid songs and theatrical vignettes - a nocturnal world - the riverbank at night.

Writer/director Catherine McKinnon is originally from Adelaide where she studied to be a Director at Flinders University Drama Centre. After working with Red Shed Theatre Company for whom she wrote and directed many productions, and the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Catherine moved to Sydney where she undertook a Masters in Creative Writing. In 2006 she won the Penguin/Australian Women’s Weekly prize for short-story writing, for Haley and the Sea. In 2008 she published her first novel, The Nearly Happy Family. Catherine is currently working on her second novel and working as a director and teaching performance in the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong.

Season details:

Thursday 22 – Saturday 24 October at 8.15pm
Gordon Theatre, Illawarra Performing Arts Centre
32 Burelli St Wollongong 2500
$23 full, $16 concession (pensioner) and $13.00 students.
Groups (ten or more) $15.00
Bookings: (02) 4226 3366 or www.ipac.org.au
Credit card and booking charges may apply.