TUESDAY ON MY MIND

Starting work on TUESDAY, by Louris van de Geer, has really got me thinking about the patterns in human behaviour. Because to me this play feels like a David Attenborough documentary set in one of our natural habitats: Suburbia, with the Supermarket our drinking hole.

Though pacing up and down the supermarket aisles is a communal act, it is often also a solitary headspace where our internal thoughts are dialled up even louder than usual. Perhaps this is why it is one of the best places for people watching!

Cast of TUESDAY: Tom Anson Mesker, Bridie McKim, Duncan Fellows and Frances Duca

And this play certainly questions the distance between our thoughts and actions.  I have been thinking a lot about how ultimately the tension between what you say and what you do is the definition of character; but it can be alarming to realise what our thoughts are capable of and what we might merely choose not to do.

And why are we such creatures of habit? Actually unpredictability has an inevitable presence in life and it seems to gain an even more unsettling power when set against a landscape of monotony and mundanity.

There is of course a satisfaction that comes with predictability or at least to seeing and then understanding patterns. And this brings me right back to the theatre! As an audience when it comes to perceiving patterns, we love to connect the dots ourselves as images are built on stage.

And that same instinct extends far beyond the theatre walls too, when we search for the patterns through chaos of life in the everyday sense.  When unpredictable events occur in life as they do in this play, we search to find the meaning, and then we tell the story to understand it.

Playwright Louris van de Geer has also put some of her thoughts together about writing the play TUESDAY, for Audrey Journal HERE

It’s a great read.

And a great play!