Dead She Scrolls

“I don’t want to hide myself behind pronouns, risk losing parts of my story by allowing someone else to narrate them.”

Shelly is blocked. She wants to write a story but the details of her subject aren’t making sense. All the elements are there, but the parts are grieving the whole. In another time, Shelly’s subject, Mary, wonders how her own words might be interpreted as she sends them down the passage of time.

A fact disrupts Shelly’s fiction, a seduction sends her back in time, and a mood distorts the characters she thought she knew best. As Shelly struggles to make sense of her creation, she begins to realise that her own life might need some re-interpretation.

Co-authored with William McBride, Dead She Scrolls was developed with She Said and presented as a rehearsed reading at Brisbane's Metro Arts, performed by Jess Louden, Lucas Stibbard, Kade Greenland, Jena Prince, and Penny Harpham.