Alaine Beek, (director of our professional partner Essence Productions) wrote The Scrunch Test – a black comedy play based on true events of her Scottish parents moving to Australia.  It explores real issues of alcoholism and the challenges of coming out as gay to one’s own family.  And it all happens on Christmas Day.  The play was awarded People’s Choice Best Script and People Choice Best Performance in 2017 at the National Playwright Competition.  Three of our members Chris de Zeeuw and Jeremy Withers, Alaine Beek were in the cast along with Ross Daniels (who won Best Male Actor).  Since then it has been rigorously workshopped and developed including a rehearsed reading performed at Hastie’s Cottage in November 2019.  Its journey has continued with Dramaturge input from Syd Brisbane and a further reading in April 2020.  The play was scheduled to be performed at The Wyndham Cultural Centre in August  – celebrating a new original script coming from Wyndham’s own artists.  Then, Covid-19 hit us and the play had to be cancelled.  The hopeful aim is that we can move the date to December and being essentially a Christmas play, this would work perfectly.  We would be bringing an exciting, unique Christmas play to the Wyndham community. We will do our best to make it happen.

 

The Victorian Drama League reviewed the play ‘Alaine Beek’s The Scrunch Test captures with honesty and delight a subject matter that is often treated harshly and without understanding.”