Image: courtesy of St Martin’s Youth Arts Centre 

When

2009: presented by St Martins Youth Arts Centre as part of the ’1989′ performance ensemble show

2009: commissioned and developed as part of the St Martins Emerging Writers’ Ensemble

Creative team

Presentation – St Martins Youth Arts Centre

Writer Michele Lee

Director Adena Jacobs

Production designer Marg Horwell

Lighting designer Richard Vabre

Sound designer Jared Lewis

With the St Martins’s 2009 Performance Ensemble

Development – St Martins Emerging Writers’ Ensemble

Writer Michele Lee

Dramaturg Melanie Beddie

About

Format

Short play, stage

Content

St Martin’s put together a group of four young playwrights and asked us to respond to the theme of 1989.  We would write 20 minute plays which would be performed by the Performance Ensemble.

1989 was an interesting year for many reasons – shit was going down in Europe, the 90s were approaching, across the world there were conservative governments in power. White Australia had just turned 200. I was 9, some of the other playwrights were barely even crawling at that age. It was a nostalgic time for us, but one of childhood memories.

I turned to Wikipedia and what stood out to me was the patricide by brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez. Seemingly for money, they murdered their  parents. Their alibi at the time was that they were at the movies watching the blockbuster film Batman.

True crime is a guilty pleasure for me, but etched in my child’s mind’s eye was the memory of the Menendez brothers in prison organge jumpsuits, seated in the docks in the courtroom. It rang a bell for me.

In Love, my 20 minute play is like an extended moment of repression, agony and guilt, as Erik Menendez, the younger and the weaker of the two brothers, is perched on the precipice of confession. The play is in three scenes, and follows a ghostly day for Erik as he befriends a handsome newcomer, Rob. Eventually, Rob and Erik end up at the murder scene: the family home. It’s vacant, Batman is playing cat ‘n’ mouse with Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Lyle is waiting.