Lachlan Philpott – August 30 2020

International Day of the Disappeared – August 30

Lachlan is an award-winning playwright who has worked widely throughout Australia and internationally, including with Checkpoint Theatre Singapore, La Comedie Francaise Paris, The Perseverance Theatre Juneau Alaska and IronBark London. He is a graduate of The University of NSW (BA Theatre and English), Sydney University (Education), NIDA (Playwright’s Studio) and VCA (Directing), and works extensively as a teacher, mentor and dramaturge at theatre companies, schools and tertiary institutions around the world. Lachlan’s many fellowships and writer/teacher residencies have included The American Conservatory Theatre San Francisco, Cite Internationale des Artes Paris, The Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney, and Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne. He was the inaugural Australian Professional Playwright Fulbright Scholar 2014-2015, Literary Associate at Australian Theatre for Young People 2008-2011, and Chair of the Australian Writer’s Guild Playwrights’ Committee 2012-2016. Lachlan’s other plays include Catapult, Lake Disappointment, Lost Boys and Michael Swordfish, a two-year collaboration with students from Newington College, Sydney, exploring how a school reacts to a boy’s disappearance. His other collaborations include Cake Daddy, co-written with Ross Anderson-Doherty and Little Emperors, a collaboration with Chinese director Wang Chong. Lachlan’s plays for teens/young adults include Bustown, The Chosen, Truck Stop and The Pineapple War. He is currently under commission to adapt his plays M. Rock, Silent Disco and The Trouble with Harry for the screen. Together with director and long-term collaborator, Dr Alyson Campbell, Lachlan founded the performance collective, wreckedAllprods.

Colder (published with his play Bison)
Playlab, 2010; ISBN 9781921390067
Full length; 3 female, 3 male (doubling required)
“No matter how close I follow you, I lose you, you lose me.
No matter who I follow, I never get an answer.”
A young boy is separated from his mother and goes missing in Disneyland. Adrift in the artificial world of giant mice and noisy parades, nobody can account for what happened in the seven frantic hours before he’s found. Years later his life seems normal; stable; happy. But something about that day haunts him. Something about that day remains unresolved. And then, he disappears again… Colder explores the infinite unknowns surrounding missing persons and the fog of purgatory that engulfs those left behind. How do you grieve someone’s loss when your only hope is their return?

The Trouble with Harry
Oberon Books, 2014; ISBN 9781783190829
4 female; 2 male
Harry Crawford – born a biological woman Eugena Falleni – lived in Sydney as a man and married twice. He, his wife Annie, and her son, lead an ordinary life in the suburbs of 1920s Sydney. Until a knock at the door and the arrival of a young woman sets in train a series of events that will result in an astounding revelation – and, ultimately, sow the seeds of bloody murder.
“Without doubt, this is the best new play to come out of this country in a long while … A play that is unafraid to navigate the clichés of the Aussie period drama, that cuts into our cultural prejudice and unresolved gender assumptions, that squarely lays the blame back in the laps of its audience, is a play worth seeing. That it is also poetic and rich and moving renders it unmissable.” – Tim Byrne, Time Out Melbourne