Kate Herbert – April 29 2018

International Firefighters Day – May 4

Kate is a theatre reviewer, director, lecturer and playwright with more than 20 produced and published plays. She has worked as an actor, comedian, improviser and teacher of Acting, Improvisation & Playwriting. Kate is Convenor of Professional Writing & Editing, Swinburne University. She won the Victorian VET (Vocational) Teacher/Trainer of the Year 2015 and is currently Course Leader Professional Writing & Editing (PWE), Swinburne University of Technology, Certificate IV PWE, Diploma PWE and Bachelor of Arts PWE. Kate holds a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Dramatic Art (Direction), and a Graduate Diploma in Drama Education. Her other plays include Bauernhof, The Potting Shed and Demon. ABC Radio National has produced Sex, Drugs & Walking Frames, On Foot Behind, Hearts of Fire and Hit and Run.

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Hearts of Fire
Australian Script Centre, 1994
90 minutes; 3 female, 4 male
Audience age: Young adult
Hearts of Fire is a drama with a comic edge which deals with the trauma associated with the aftermath of bush fires. It is set during both the 1994 NSW fires and the Macedon Ash Wednesday fires in 1983. Carl was a CFA volunteer at the age of 20 and was traumatised by the death of his girlfriend during Ash Wednesday. For ten years he has not held down a job, a relationship or a home, drinks to excess and has never sought counselling, unlike his brother and friends in Macedon. In 1994, he meets Maeve and they begin a relationship, but both are keeping secrets about their pasts. During the NSW fires, Carl revisits his past experience at Macedon and reveals all to Maeve, who in turn reveals why she left her adopted home in England. The play ends with Carl returning to Macedon to visit the site of his trauma.

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Triptych
Australian Script Centre, 1994
Length 90 minutes; 2 female, 1 male
Audience age: Young adult
Triptych is a mystery-drama about love and revenge. Mandy, the dizzy young wife of attractive writer and inveterate drinker, Daniel, arrives at their bush retreat with the intellectual, sophisticated Nina, who wants to buy their collection of first editions. Mandy seems unaware that Nina is Daniel’s former lover. Daniel is angry, assuming that Nina has manufactured the meeting to destroy his new life. The three are incarcerated in the house together overnight. The submerged antagonisms bring about conflict, re-surfacing love, absurd situations and revelation of obsessions – and a death.