From Company Of Rogues comes Sophia Simmons' award-winning story about growing up, the universe, and everything.
The script (originally written as a one-woman show) has been re-imagined to represent a broad spectrum of women.
Teenager Sophia is into all things science and sci-fi, and she's right in the midst of growing up and learning about all the complexities of the universe. She's also trying to break free of her father's orbit.
Here, Director Erica Lovell pens an open letter about the show.
“I recently went to the outback. I was born in Australia 35 years ago, and I feel like I’ve only just seen this country. In the lead up to the trip, I read Tim Winton’s 'My Island Home' for the first time, too. I know – how very unpatriotic of me to have taken this long to get to the work of our national writer, our Bard Down Under. He speaks about the unfathomable vastness of the Australian landscape, how its seemingly unreachable horizons impress upon you the sense of infinite space.
Infinite space.
Space. That’s the other thing I saw for the first time while I was out back. Out back near Watarrka (or Kings Canyon, if the white people’s linguistic robbery of the land is more familiar) the stars almost settle on your nose as you gaze upwards, they’re so bright and clear. The Milky Way arches over you like a great shimmering highway cutting through the sky. You feel you can reach out and run your fingers through it and pull them out to find specks of glitter on the tips. I learned while I was out there that space is a mere one hundred kilometres away – the sense of it settling on your nose being closer to reality than you might think. This is the peculiar thing about contemplating the stars in outback Australia – you are simultaneously dwarfed by the magnitude of our landscape and the skies reaching out forever above us, and embraced by the sand moulding to your footprint and the starlight on your nose. Everything is oddly close and unfathomably distant.
I think this is what our Sophia is feeling in 'Gravity Guts'. I say our Sophia to distinguish between the odd and special character the wonderful Emily McKnight is crafting, and the playwright Sophia Simmons whose equally magical semi-autobiographical avatar we have the great honour of bringing to life. Our Sophia is grappling with knowledge just out of reach. Our Sophia is coming to terms with the simultaneous emotional cavern between her and her father, and the genetic closeness she finds in the turn of her nose, the occasional proclivity for weed, and (perhaps) an obsession with space. And I can only imagine Sophia the playwright wrestling with a similar dichotomy – her intimacy with this work, and the wonderful and terrifying knowledge that 12 women in another state are bringing it – her – to life. What a magnificent and brave gift she has given us.
This production of 'Gravity Guts' is the coming-together of all my artistic heritage. If you come and visit our Sophia at Sydney Fringe, you’ll be enveloped in soundscape and music, you’ll be dizzy with movement, you’ll be transported by poetry, you’ll be tickled by a delicate humour, and challenged by a too-familiar conundrum, and you’ll be moved by some of the best storytellers I know.
This piece is special. The mind that birthed it, the black and white print form in which it comes to us, and the wholly new and wholly familiar collaborative work we are making from that print. Our work is the child of Sophia Simmons, Emily McKnight, Angella Gachomo, Monica Kumar, Naomi Belet, Cassady Maddox, Mikaela Franco, Jessie Loeb, Annaliese Apps, Juliette Coates, Natali Foti, Lisa Hanssens, Lisa Robinson, and me. We can’t wait to share her with you."
Infinite space.
Space. That’s the other thing I saw for the first time while I was out back. Out back near Watarrka (or Kings Canyon, if the white people’s linguistic robbery of the land is more familiar) the stars almost settle on your nose as you gaze upwards, they’re so bright and clear. The Milky Way arches over you like a great shimmering highway cutting through the sky. You feel you can reach out and run your fingers through it and pull them out to find specks of glitter on the tips. I learned while I was out there that space is a mere one hundred kilometres away – the sense of it settling on your nose being closer to reality than you might think. This is the peculiar thing about contemplating the stars in outback Australia – you are simultaneously dwarfed by the magnitude of our landscape and the skies reaching out forever above us, and embraced by the sand moulding to your footprint and the starlight on your nose. Everything is oddly close and unfathomably distant.
Erica Lovell
I think this is what our Sophia is feeling in 'Gravity Guts'. I say our Sophia to distinguish between the odd and special character the wonderful Emily McKnight is crafting, and the playwright Sophia Simmons whose equally magical semi-autobiographical avatar we have the great honour of bringing to life. Our Sophia is grappling with knowledge just out of reach. Our Sophia is coming to terms with the simultaneous emotional cavern between her and her father, and the genetic closeness she finds in the turn of her nose, the occasional proclivity for weed, and (perhaps) an obsession with space. And I can only imagine Sophia the playwright wrestling with a similar dichotomy – her intimacy with this work, and the wonderful and terrifying knowledge that 12 women in another state are bringing it – her – to life. What a magnificent and brave gift she has given us.
This production of 'Gravity Guts' is the coming-together of all my artistic heritage. If you come and visit our Sophia at Sydney Fringe, you’ll be enveloped in soundscape and music, you’ll be dizzy with movement, you’ll be transported by poetry, you’ll be tickled by a delicate humour, and challenged by a too-familiar conundrum, and you’ll be moved by some of the best storytellers I know.
This piece is special. The mind that birthed it, the black and white print form in which it comes to us, and the wholly new and wholly familiar collaborative work we are making from that print. Our work is the child of Sophia Simmons, Emily McKnight, Angella Gachomo, Monica Kumar, Naomi Belet, Cassady Maddox, Mikaela Franco, Jessie Loeb, Annaliese Apps, Juliette Coates, Natali Foti, Lisa Hanssens, Lisa Robinson, and me. We can’t wait to share her with you."
