Moths at rest, The Chair, Hmong Yoofs

The National Playwriting Festival 2014 is over, and I have slumped back to Melbourne.  I was all shades of the emotional rainbow – exhausted, angry, exhilarated, excited… what else begins with ‘ex’? Well you get it. I felt a lot of things, which makes sense as leading up to the festival we had a week and a half of rehearsal and re-writing. Oh the re-writing. Oh the nervous energy, me up at 4.30am one morning.

After the intense incubation of read-rewrite-read-rewrite, the festival was three and bit days of plays and plays and plays. I befriended Cairns playwright Kathryn Ash (Thieves), who was staying at the same Adina as me. And I had the privilege of getting to know Brisbane/Sydney playwright Julia-Rose Lewis (Samson) and the indomitable Angela Betzien (Mortido).

I loved hearing my play, Moths, on the first read on the Friday, then sort of hated it on the second read on Sunday. I am told this is very normal. Tim Roseman, Playwriting Australia’s Artistic Director, described my play as ‘verbatim fantasia’. Harry, one of the actors, described it as me ‘pooing rainbows’. And we’re back to rainbows…

While the festival was accelerating towards me, Radio National broadcast my audio piece The Chair, from the Talon Salon project.

On June 28, I’ll be talking at the inaugural Hmong Melbourne Youth Society conference. Despite clearly being the least Hmong person in Australia, I have graciously been given 30 minutes to bang on about myself.