FREE Lunchtime Theatre
For over 40 years Curtin’s Theatre Arts has presented FREE Lunchtime Theatre. Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we present a short play at the Hayman Theatre. This ‘Spring’ season of FREE Lunchtime Theatre includes drama, comedy and new works all produced and performed by Curtin’s Theatre Arts students.
NO BOOKING REQUIRED.
So grab your lunch and a friend and come along!
Venue: HAYMAN THEATRE, Building 302 Curtin University, Kent Street Bentley.
The plays start at 12.10pm sharp, you’ll be out before 1pm!

30, 31 July & 1 August, 12.10pm
STARS LIKE THESE
By James Letch.
Good friends are like stars,
you don’t always see them,
but you know they’re always there.
Stars Like These is a bittersweet play that’s two parts comedy, one part drama, in the classic rom-com scenario. We have two groups of friends that are mostly all late teens that find themselves in a very grease-like situation as TOM and EMILY are found to have a romantic interest in one-another. Thus, throwing the two groups into ‘wingman’ mode as they attempt to prepare their friends for the big date, leading to chaos, conflict, and confetti.
Directed by James Letch

6, 7 & 8 August, 12.10pm
THE RYDEN MANIFESTO
Adapted for stage by Arthur Brown.
Ryden is real and the government knows about it.
The Ryden Manifesto is a document that moves through digital time and space, telling the story of a secret relationship that may or may not be real, accumulating LiveJournal poetry and Tumblr posts that stick to it like crumbs. And before you today, the Manifesto is excavated once more, as a chorus of emo kids, scene queens, and guylinered guitarists brings it to life like never before. Take it to heart. Take it as gospel. Is any of it true – and does that matter?
Directed by Arthur Brown

13, 14 & 15 August, 12.10pm
JUANA LA LOCA
By Annalisa Cicchini.
The Mad Queen.
Juana La Loca explores Queen Juana’s love and loss through Flamenco storytelling.
The 16th century Queen of Castile was given the title of the ‘mad Queen’ for her supposed ‘mad’ behaviour…
Was she mad? Or was she manipulated?
Directed by Annalisa Cicchini

20, 21 & 22 August, 12.10pm
OUR SCARLET MOON
By Aydee Bull.
To live is to burn.
The eldest Prince is dead, and a red moon stains the sky. Grappling with the implications of their brother’s death and the enlistment of their sibling in the Monarch’s senseless war, Princesses Edith and Jocelyne quarrel over the steps to take forward, but none can escape the scarlet moon that grows closer with each setting of the sun. Will the red moon continue to grow? And if so, how long until all day becomes night? Our Scarlet Moon is a musical exploration of the effects of society’s actions and inactions, and questions our priorities when met with the reality of a burning world.
Directed by Aydee Bull

27, 28 & 29 August, 12.10pm
JUNIOR KICKSTART
By Conor Flint.
5 Employees, 3 hours ’til close, 1 Promotion.
Who can be trusted? Who’s the biggest competition? and what’s with that glowing French Fry? Junior Kickstart is the tense, inspiring tale of a group of minimum wage fast-food employees as they’re thrust into lethal competition against each other once they hear word that a promotion has opened, a position that pays $40/h. Alliances are formed, tested, broken and formed again in a social war amongst the 5 employees as they scrap to collect as many resume references as they can during a single climactic night shift. Where the other employees look to each other to guarantee positive word on their hard work, another form of alliance is forged between the establishment’s most dedicated worker and a Glowing Red French Fry.
Directed by Conor Flint

24, 25 & 26 September, 12.10pm
BITTERSWEET
By Bec Moore.
Go back to your roots.
Violet has a terrible feeling in her bones; Daniel feels a loss so deeply within him. As the sun sets, the two young strangers meet at what they both thought was just their special tree, the only tree on Violets’ Grandads’ farm in rural WA, and refuse to leave. They talk throughout the night, and realise they have more in common than they first thought, maybe more than they should… BITTERSWEET is a coming of age drama that uses conversational and poetic dialogue, and a special little tree, to explore how deeply rooted our mental health, grief, and loneliness can be.
Directed by Bec Moore

1, 2 & 3 October, 12.10pm
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Adapted & devised by Laurence Strangio and Annie Thorold.
The unfed mind devours itself…
Based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 classic novella, The Yellow Wallpaper is an abstract, movement-based, monologue-heavy play that explores the silent dangers of isolation and understimulation, the oppression of women, and the slow, maddening collapse of the human psyche. As days pass, the protagonist’s mind unravels and obsession grows, until the boundary between reality and imagination peels away entirely. An unsettling sensory experience— this is one room you won’t want to leave.
Directed by Ciedele Mezger