A full Rehearsed Reading of Hot House was performed at the Crossrail Place Roof Garden, September 2019

Extracts have been performed at The Garage with All In Productions as part of their scratch night scheme, and as part of Burnt Chip Theatre's Burnt + SCRATCHED both in June, 2019.

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Dystopian crisis rages outside a garden of Eden greenhouse. The girl grown there to save the world yearns for anything else. Guilt, repression and sense of self are explored in this hot-housed coming of age, experimental drama.

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“Cabbages. Cabbages… Cabbages. Cabbages. Green. Grow. Still. Sow. Stagnant. Fragrant. Feelers. Creeping across soft skin. Bring face to the sun. Heat lamps. Sun. Feet still in the soil when skin’s in the sky.”

 

Maryam, a girl grown from a cabbage, is kept in the controlled environment of the final fertile place left on earth. In this greenhouse, where she and her gardener (and only friend) Caleb live, along with their plant wards, they prepare to restore the earth when it’s ready. But even this dystopic garden of Eden can’t be kept pure. There are questions of money, upkeep and the motives of the greenhouse’s creator.

 

Maryam struggles with her identity and purpose. Is it better for her to be selfish and follow her own urges and curiosity, or continue being obedient and fulfil her responsibility to a species that continues to self-destruct?

 

Woven through the narrative are moments of spoken word and abstract outcries from the polluted, corrupt, concrete world on the other side of the greenhouse windows.

 

At its core, Hot House struggles with the familiar themes of impulse, guilt and coming of age, through the lens of a dystopic future that is all too imaginable. It is a tale of girlhood, womanhood… and cabbage-hood.