It's Franny's eighth birthday and she's getting her first pet - a cockatiel called Prince Ping Pong. She's always wanted someone to love, and more importantly, someone to love her back. But when Prince Ping Pong starts loving their daughter the wrong way, Joan and Richard are thrown into an absurdist parenting nightmare. They must try to remove the deviant bird while conserving what's left of Franny's innocence. After all, these are her formative years. Love Bird explores the natural process of childhood sexual development and how it is controlled, twisted and warped - often by those who mean to protect it.
NTRO Output Category
- Original Creative Work : Textual work
Place
MelbourneNTRO Publisher
In Case of Emergency PressMedium
PlaywritingResearch Statement
Love Bird is a theatrical script adapted from Harriss’s short screenplay of the same name. Through a practice-led research process of self-adaptation, the playwright explores how a play script’s requirement for collaborative space differs from that of a screenplay, particularly when the work in question involves sensitive and taboo subject matter. The original screenplay sets up a dramatic scenario in which an eight-year-old girl is gifted a pet cockatiel who proceeds to try to mate with her. The play explores how the girl’s perception of these encounters is negatively influenced by her parents’ projections of their own sexual experiences.
The process of adaptation involved stripping back details included in the original screenplay to create more space for collaborative experimentation from actors, directors, designers and audience members. Through a process of paring back prescriptive scene descriptions, the project revealed how much farther taboo subject matter could be pushed when collaborators were given what Harriss terms ‘ambiguous narrative space’. Reviewers of the play revealed how this ‘ambiguous narrative space’ accommodated the pushing of such boundaries:
‘Harriss... has a serious penchant for delving into the dark side of the family unit and teasing out its tensions and anxieties, and actually making people laugh’ (Stage Whispers 2018)
‘Harriss has a talent for searching the depths of the family soul then baring it to the world with flagrant absurdity that had one’s giggle buttons hit continuously’ (TAGG 2018)
‘Harriss is not afraid to dive deep into realms of the taboo, immersing audience members in truly uncomfortable subject matter that is thankfully offset by liberal amounts of slapstick and humour’ (Milkbar Mag 2018)
‘Love Bird may push the envelope with what it depicts on stage, but look beyond the bestiality and Harriss has something meaningful and insightful to impart’ (My Melbourne Arts 2018)
‘...a very dangerous work’ (Samsara Dunston 2018)Size or Duration of Work
45 pages
