Let Me Know When You Get Home
A Curious Women project
2016 – Onwards
Let Me Know When You Get Home is a new, coming-of-age Australian play, deconstructing the myth of queer youth needing to “escape” Western Sydney. It draws from personal experience with suburban isolation and Filipinx diasporic identity to create a work which explores the inner lives of isolated queer people and the discomfort that exists when no place fits. Let Me Know When You Get Home is a personal narrative on birth and chosen families, friendships and first loves, and ultimately, the universal desire to make a home in other people.
SYNOPSIS
Val, a Filipina teenage lesbian, is desperate to escape the purgatory period between high school and university so she can finally be seen as an adult. She makes a break from her religious, overbearing mother and childhood best friend, Thi, to set out to the city in search of the queer community she lacks back home in Fairfield. When she joins a Mardi Gras float and meets Prince, an enigmatic, older artist, Val is sure she has finally found her queer utopia – even if it means leaving her best friend, Thi, behind. But where do you turn when it turns out no place fits?
PROCESS
Miranda started writing Let Me Know When You Get Home in the original Curious Creator’s Writer’s Group in 2015, under the title Into the Closet. It was further developed in 2016 as part of the Curious Creators first team residency as part of the Bundanon Artist Residency Program. Later that year, it was selected by PWA for New Play Development, and had its first public reading at Urban Stories 2016 in Riverside Theatre.
In 2018, Miranda continued her process with a four day creative development at Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. Miranda, with the support of Q Theatre at the Joan, Playwriting Australia, a grant from the Blacktown Arts Centre held a showcase night for the work on August 9th.
Most recently, Let Me Know When You Get Home was selected as part of Mardi Gras 2019’s PLAYLIST, a partnership program between Seymour Centre, Mardi Gras and Siren Theatre Co, that celebrates new work by established, mid-career and emerging LGBTQIA+ artists. It’ll be shown at the Seymour Centre on February 16, 2019.
DEVELOPMENT VIDEO
PERSONNEL
Writer: Miranda Aguilar
Supported by CuriousWorks, PWA, The Q at The Joan Theatre, and Blacktown Arts Centre.