Zoe Muller first stepped on stage at the age of nine and staged her first play, an adaptation of 'Puberty Blues', at 15.
Now, while still an undergraduate at Flinders University, she is poised to present her State Theatre Company and Flinders University Young Playwrights’ Award-winning work 'Rattling The Keys' in a production by Deadset Theatre Company, a company she co-owns.
Although 'Rattling The Keys' is an examination of the challenges facing young people in Australia, Zoe is a testament to the potential of our emerging generation when they are given the opportunity.
According to Zoe, the concept behind Deadset Theatre’s original full-length production about ice addiction in Cooper Pedy had been rattling around in her brain for years.
“I wrote a play when I was 15 called 'Servo' and it was quite terrible but it was around the same idea of a group of young people who were living together and were struggling with crystal methamphetamine, so I think this story has always been in my brain and so it’s been great to be able to express it as a full-length play.”
It is a work that combines two of her fascinations: Rural living and drug addiction. Zoe explains the origins of her outback ruminations.
“I haven’t lived in country towns and I think that’s perhaps why I’m fascinated by them because I’ve always lived around the city around lots of people.”
“I live in Stirling and my street that I lived on was like a country town; we’d always hang out together. It was such a nice feeling knowing each other but also the other side of a country town is that knowing each other can be a bad thing as well.”
Residents of suburbia may long for some idealised vision of communal country living but as Zoe explains, living in a place where everybody knows your name has its drawbacks.
“The characters in the play are great friends because they’ve known each other their whole life which is great because they’re so close but it does also mean that they are stuck with each other and have nobody else to be with, so that does cause a lot of conflict. They can’t reach out to anyone else because all they have is each other.”
When you have nobody left to run to, then, the comforting embrace of illegal chemicals is alluring. In our regions, though, young people have limited options to numb themselves, Zoe says.
“[Ice] is so prominent in regional towns because the city gets shipments of other types of drugs, ones that come from other countries, but in regional towns they have to make them themselves or buy them from local areas.”
With 'Rattling The Keys', Zoe and Deadset Theatre are using their platform to be a voice for isolated and often disempowered young Australians. While Zoe does take inspiration from adult playwrights who write stories for young people such as Debra Oswald and Patricia Cornelius, she believes it is also very important for young people to hear their own voices on stage too.
“I really like writing stories about young people, serious stories, because I think there is a lack of plays especially with young female leads, which was something I struggled to find when I was younger with stories about young people that are written by young people, because it often is quite a different perspective than when someone who is 60 is writing about young people.”
