A popular, athletic young man is punched in the street, and dies.
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The tragedy takes a heavy toll on his parents and brother.
This is the fertile premise of Coward Punch, a theatrical work-in-progress by C.J. Bowerbird, the pen name of Chris Huet, who's also a performance poet.
He wants to keep the two creative streams separate: this is his first play, part of The Street Theatre's First Seen: New Works-in-Progress program.
This much-loved series was able to continue online throughout the pandemic, but there's really nothing like being in the same room as writers, dramaturgs, actors and other theatre practitioners. This year, the series is back in the same room again, and the results will be livestreamed for audiences to see and provide feedback, helping to shape the pieces as they are developed to the stage where they are ready for production.
In Coward Punch, set in Canberra, Bowerbird says, the popular, athletic Nathan Buckley, 19, dies at the hand of a man named Crenshaw.
Nathan's reserved younger sibling, Luke, who looked up to him, withdraws into himself. He and his father Scott witnessed the attack and blame themselves in part for what happened. And mother Nicole, who only hears about what happened later, is devastated.
Bowerbird says he was influenced by media reports of coward punch or one-punch attacks, which are often fatal. But it wasn't the attacks themselves or the legal process he chose as his focus.
"It's about the effect on a family and how they respond," he says.
"They're processing their own grief internally and as a family."
They also suffer stress from the fact that Crenshaw is released on bail.
"At the moment, the play ends before he's in court," Bowerbird says.
Working with dramaturg Nigel Featherstone and director Tracy Bourne, he's interested in exploring the directions the story could take and in fleshing things out during the First Seen process.
"It's verse-based, with an element of poetry and imagery in the voice of each of the characters, because I'm a poet."
The 53-year-old, who came to Canberra 16 years ago, says the work is not autobiographical, except for the fact he is the father of now-adult sons and wants to explore some of the issues surrounding Australian manhood.
"I'm interested in some of the things I see in myself, like not talking about anything," he says.
While Bowerbird is having his first experience as a playwright with First Seen, Helen Machalias has had solid theatrical experience, also at The Street Theatre.
In 2013, her first full-length play, In Loco Parentis, was produced there and in 2019, her adaptation of Robin Klein's People Might Hear You went into development at The Street. Her work Barren Ground was in the First Seen program in 2020, with development occurring via Zoom.
"It was actually, surprisingly, really dynamic," she says. "It meant I could work with creative teams from Melbourne and Sydney as well as Canberra."
Now her work is back for a second round of development.
Barren Ground is set between 2010 and 2018 in the Christmas Island detention centre, drawing on William Shakespeare's The Tempest for some of its qualities, characters and dialogue.
"I liked the way The Tempest combined magic realism with social commentary," Machalias says.
And with Shakespeare's play also having an island location, there are many parallels with the story she wanted to tell, with Prospero, his daughter Miranda and Ariel becoming Iranian asylum-seekers and Caliban a Chinese-Malaysian man who works at the detention centre.
This year, Machalias will have a two-week creative development process: the first week will be spent writing, consulting and rewriting, the second will be spent in the rehearsal room, with the livestream taking place on July 8.
Meanwhile, dramaturg-educator Emily Clark's Life Story - the working title - was in The Street's Early Phase program in 2021-2.
"Early Phase was about them discussing the concept an showing you the ropes; it was really embryonic," she says. "It's about the unexpected friendship between two very, very different women."
Elizabeth, in her 70s, is lonely, prickly and dying of cancer. The younger, gentler, pragmatic Kim, is her death doula - "like being a midwife but for death".
Life Story depicts the developing relationship between the two women in this intimate, difficult situation and a secret that Elizabeth is carrying is eventually revealed.
Now the work's actual life story continues as part of First Seen, and Clark has has time to work on the piece further before its creative development later in the year.
Several plays developed in First Seen go on to be transformed into full productions at The Street, and others have gone even further.
One is Dylan Van Den Berg's Milk, developed through several First Seen seasons, which had its premiere at The Street in 2021, and was honoured at the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and 2021 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Peter Cook's Breaking The Castle premiered at The Street in 2020 and had since toured to HotHouse Theatre and Riverside Theatres.
In June this year, Twenty Minutes With The Devil by Des Manderson and Luis Gomez Romero will have its world premiere at The Street Theatre.
What will be the future for that play and the others developed this year? We can only wait and see.
First Seen 2022: Coward Punch by CJ Bowerbird, May 27; Barren Ground by Helen Machalias, July 29; Life Story by Emily Clark, October 14. thestreet.org.au.