Rough Draft #54

Rough Draft = creative development² + a free public showing

Rough Drafts are week-long workshops that give theatre makers the opportunity to develop a new work for the stage. 

Writers and directors are given access to a rehearsal space, a paid team of actors or creatives and dramaturgical support. They may use the week and resources to complete a first draft of a play or they may choose to develop a script that is already complete in draft form. 

At the end of the workshop week, an audience is invited into the development process to have a sneak peek of a work in progress at the free public showing. These showings provide artists with a test audience and a platform to showcase their work to the industry. They also give audiences with an appetite for novelty access to the freshest playwriting.

ROUGH DRAFT #54 A FOOL IN LOVE

By Van Badham
After La dama boba by Lope De Vaga
Directed by Jessica Arthur  

Why do fools fall in love?

Otto Otavio is the heir to a once prosperous car parts manufacturing empire now in terminal decline. To keep up his coastal linen lifestyle and inherit the family fortune, he must marry off his eldest daughter, Phynayah.

On the other side of matrimony lie enough riches and social status to tempt any aspirational bridegroom… but there’s a catch; though beautiful, Phynayah is a clown – and not a funny one. Gormless, witless and hopelessly silly, Phynayah is immaturity itself in a crochet bikini, a banana peel joke with a face. Is even the most desperate social climber really prepared to engage a poolside belle who’s intellectually outshone by her towel?

Van Badham's A Fool in Love is a raucous comedy adapted from Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega's La dama boba. In this new STC commission from the writer of Banging Denmark, Van swaps 17th century Spain for a bourgie beachside town somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane, in a lollaroffic, timeless farce - about how love makes nincompoops of us all.