‘Tammy & Kite’ opens at the Sydney Fringe in September.
Tammy & Kite is the new play from the independent collective Montague Basement. Devised and performed by Sydney-based artists Hannah Cox and Caitlin West, this show tackles the effect and experience of grief and trauma on children.
Produced by Imogen Gardam the show also features a soundscape from emerging female composers Josephine Gibson and Alexis Weaver. Gardam explains that it is extremely important for her to be able to work and build with all-female teams whenever possible.
“For a play that explores young girls, it was even more important to work with female voices that don’t need to assert themselves, and can work comfortably.”
Tammy & Kite follows nine-year-old Kite who has a full life of friends, school, handball, and Healthy Harold. However, every afternoon when she comes home from school, a darker side of her world threatens to creep in.
In her bedroom, where the real and the imaginary collide, Kite uses the only tool she has – play – to learn how to articulate and navigate a world that is bigger and more unpredictable than she can understand.
West highlights how children often use play and imagination as key factors for growth and development.
“In Tammy & Kite, we explore the power of a child’s imagination, not only as a tool for creative expression but as a way of articulating pain and navigating grief. In this piece, the imaginary is used not as a way to sidestep or trivialise the pain of a child who has experienced loss, but as a way to express it.”
To recreate the world of a child’s imagination puppets, light, music and shadow will be used in the performance.
Cox explains, “By exploring the process of grief from a child’s point of view we are seeking to look back on and legitimise the child’s voice, which is so often lost in the louder voices of the adults around them.”
She continued to say, “Through this piece, we hope to give voice to something that is so often drowned out by the adult world, and to legitimise and learn from the ways in which children experience and express loss, grief and pain.”
Tammy & Kite will be performed at the Erskineville Town Hall from 13 September to 17 September.
More Information:
Where: Erskineville Town Hall, 104 Erskineville Rd.
When: 13 September – 17 September 2016, 7 pm
Tickets: $15-$20
