Theatre: Driving Into Walls

By Suzie Miller

Barking Gecko Theatre Company

Directed and designed by John Sheedy

Featuring Harrison Elliott, Michael Smith, Rikki Bremner, Thalia Livingstone and Matthew Tupper

The Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre

February 25 – March 3

pic: Jon Green

Last year, I called another show about alienated youth in Western Australia, Reg Cribb’s The Damned, memorable and unlovely, and that’s also an apt description of John Sheedy and Suzie Miller’s collaboration on Driving into Walls.

Cribb’s essentially fictional story drew on a number of real-life stories from around Australia, while Driving into Walls is the result of interviews and workshop exercises with 500 young people from around the state. It tells their private stories, about the perils and pitfalls of 21st century life for young people, in their own words.