Why I Said Yes to Directing COOKED

I am really excited to be directing COOKED, a new contemporary play by Lana Page and Angel Duggan, at KXT on Broadway this September. The play follows Logan, a young woman whose world starts to unravel when her mum begins coming home late, disappearing and acting strangely. At the same time, her best friend Jean is becoming increasingly absorbed in a new relationship with a boyfriend who gives Logan a very funny feeling.

It is a story about relationships, family, friendship and the pressures of being a young woman now. It explores parentification, coercive control, mental health, dating, drinking culture, university, work and the complicated expectations that come with trying to hold everything together. It is also full of vaping, Tn's, Kookai and a healthy dose of woo woo energy, so there is plenty of humour alongside the harder stuff.

I was drawn to COOKED because I am passionate about supporting female creatives and female led work. Lana and Angel are wonderful, emerging writers, and the production has an all-female cast, with Angel Duggan, Lana Page and Sally Evans bringing these characters to life. I really believe in creating opportunities for women to develop their voices and take their work further, particularly when the stories they are telling speak so directly to contemporary female experience.

I first worked with Lana and Angel when I was teaching at the University of Wollongong, and we spent a couple of weeks working together on acting and connection. We stayed in touch afterwards, and they invited me to see an earlier version of COOKED at Sydney Fringe last year. Earlier this year, they asked me if I would come on board as director.

One of the things I have loved about the process has been working with them to develop the play further. We spent time looking at the structure, the trajectory of the characters and how each scene could contribute to the story as a whole. We experimented with the material, reshaped scenes and developed the characters further before taking the script into rehearsals. It has been a really rewarding creative process, particularly seeing how much the work can grow when writers and director have the time and space to really interrogate the story together.

Taking on COOKED has also been an important step for me professionally. I have spent much of my career as an actor and writer, and I have directed cabarets and worked as a guest director, but taking on an entire production as director has been a significant new challenge. It has given me the opportunity to bring together so much of what I have learned from working across different parts of the theatre industry.

Most importantly, I have loved working with this team and watching the play come to life.

COOKED is funny, messy, uncomfortable and recognisable. It is about the things we do for the people we love, the things we tolerate, and what happens when those relationships start to change.

I cannot wait to share it with audiences.

COOKED runs from 12 to 21 September at KXT on Broadway as part of the Underground Program.

Tickets and more information: COOKED the Play