David Burton – August 2015

International Overdose Awareness Day – August 31 2015

David is a producer, podcaster, writer, director and teacher. He holds a Bachelor of Theatre Arts (Theatre Studies) from the University of Southern Queensland and was named USQ’s 2014 Outstanding Alumnus of the Year as well as Young Alumnus of the Year. In the same year, he won the Text Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Writing for his memoir How to be Happy. David is also currently Associate Producer at Brisbane Writers’ Festival. He has worked with dozens of performance companies including Queensland Theatre Company, Queensland Music Festival, La Boite Theatre Company and The Grin and Tonic Theatre Troupe, for which he wrote many plays for young audiences, most notably Orbit in 2013. David’s other plays include  the co-written Life Etc. (with Emily Burton and Kate Murphy) and The Truth Is… (with Emily Burton).

April’s Fool
Playlab, 2010; ISBN 9781921390074
1 hour; 3 female, 2 male (cast can be expanded to 27 roles)
Cast age: 15-50; Audience age: teen, young adult
In April 2009, two weeks short of his nineteenth birthday, Toowoomba teenager Kristjan Terauds died due to complications from illicit drug use. Using the words of Kristjan’s friends and family interviewed over many months, and inspired by the journal of Kristjan’s father, David Burton has dramatised a powerful story of love, loss, and sadness, with touching humour. This is a thought provoking, memorable, and ultimately optimistic reflection on the choices we make and how they affect those we love.

Lazarus Won’t Get Out of Bed
Playlab, 2014; ISBN 9781921390777
1.5 hours; 3-4 cast members
Cast age: 3 early twenties, 1 any age; Audience age: senior school years
Lazarus would like to be a hero, but he can’t. Taken by mad Russian scientists into the depths of Mount Doom where Darth Vader rules with … Lord Voldemort, Lazarus has been in bed for three days and nothing is going to make him move. He gets to make the rules; is master of his own fate. He can be anyone he wants to be, any pop culture icon he chooses, and he always gets the girl. That is until the arrival of Syd. This text explores the idea of the hero’s quest and the lengths we’ll go to when avoiding our own realities. It suggests that with a sprinkling of comedy and a splattering of pop-culture it’s easy to forget what haunts us.