Maura Pierlot
Detective Work: Uncovering Fragments
As writers we often play detective – probing, investigating, discovering, each step bringing us closer to the truth. But what if the subject of your investigation is mysterious, surly, contradictory and often inaccessible? What if the person you’re trying to understand is standing on the other side of a locked door, with a mad dog at their side?
What if that person is you?
That’s the task I faced when writing my latest play, Fragments. Distracted with mounting deadlines on a typically busy day, I found myself submitting a grant proposal to write a dramatic work on youth mental health. I didn’t know why, I just knew this work had to come out of me. Having lived vicariously in the adolescent world in recent years – both in the course of writing my young adult manuscript, Freefalling, and helping navigate our three kids through high school – I assumed I was writing for young people. Not only my kids but for their friends and the countless young adults I spoke to during the course of this project. It’s only now that I realise I was also writing for myself.
Writing for me has always been a way of making sense of the world. As a child, I experienced a fair bit of trauma – there’s a book in there. I’ve seen people stabbed and pushed onto train tracks in the New York subway; I’ve been mugged numerous times; I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to find a drugged-out stranger sitting on the foot of my bed; I’ve lived in neighbourhoods that required three chain locks and a propped chair. I’ve survived death threats. I’ve grown up in a family that seemed like they had it all but was marred by violence and undiagnosed mental illness. That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, all before my mid-twenties.
Not surprisingly, I buried a litany of ‘incidents’, figuring everyone has shit to deal with, and just got on with life. Perhaps that’s why I always escaped into books and drifted towards philosophy, searching for other worlds, for answers and meaning. And guffaws. I was always ‘the funny one’, my claim to fame being able to make people laugh so hard that food came out of their noses or they vomited – gross, but impressive nonetheless. Now, later in life, the metaphorical suitcase is bursting open and I’m not sure why – is it the cumulative effect, the lifetime of packing away issues? Is the leather simply worn, broken? Or is the bag just too damn heavy to carry?
Recent studies have shown that arts engagement, whether music, writing, singing or painting, can improve resilience and self esteem for individuals (debatable, given my arduous journey trying to get my much-lauded YA manuscript published), while also delivering public health benefits. Perhaps the bureaucracy that has deemed STEM subjects to be of greater value, hence scaling much more favourably than arts subjects, should broaden its paradigm. In times of crisis and confusion, arts can bring us new-found wellbeing on so many levels, challenging us to see ourselves, and our world, through a different lens. Theatre often rises to this challenge brilliantly; perhaps that’s why dramatic writing is proving such a comfortable fit for me lately.
Fragments tackles the theme that stress at home, in school and in life is challenging young people beyond their usual coping abilities, often leaving them disenfranchised and vulnerable. The eight interwoven imagined stories are highly personal, yet universal. My aim in presenting this work is to spark conversation, not just now but in the weeks and months ahead. We may be getting better about asking someone if they’re okay, but do we know what to do if they insist they are but show signs that they’re not? And what if they say they’re not okay – do we know what to do then?
Maura Pierlot
Fragments will be performed at The Street Theatre, 23-27 October. For bookings or further information, phone 6247 1519 or visit http://www.thestreet.org.au/shows/fragments-maura-pierlot.
Maura Pierlot is an award-winning author and playwright who hails from New York but has called Canberra home for nearly thirty years. In 2016 Maura won the MPS Travel+Tours Award, Capital Arts Patrons’ Organisation to write a dramatic work on youth mental health, which has developed into Fragments. That year she also won the SOLO Monologue Competition, Hothouse Theatre for her play, Tapping Out, which went on to receive three awards at Short+Sweet Sydney (2017). More recently, Maura has been an Artist-in-Residence at Bundanon Trust and Ainslie + Gorman Arts Centres. A former business owner, medical news reporter and editor of Australian Medicine, Maura also writes for children and young adults. In 2017 she was named winner of the CBCA Aspiring Writers Mentorship Program for her young adult manuscript, Freefalling. Maura’s first picture book, The Trouble in Tune Town won the 2018 ACT Writing and Publishing Award (Children’s category) along with international accolades. Maura enjoys visiting schools and libraries as a guest reader and speaker, contributing reviews for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Reading Time, and growing the street library she started last year. She has a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate, each in philosophy, specialising in ethics.
Portrait of Maura Pierlot by Hilary Wardhaugh
