Cohabitation
A play in five acts.
About
Fred and Gina are flatmates looking for love. Kate and Simon have found love, but are flatmates. Matt’s greatest love is himself. Set in Bondi Australia, ‘Cohabitation’ is the tale of five vulnerable hearts, two very different households and one overcrowded café. Inspired by Lamarck’s giraffes, neural Buddhists and the Flight of the Conchords, it’s a back from the beachfront look at survival of the fittest, the power of music and falling in love.
Productions
Bondi Pavilion 2009
Writer, director, producer: Jane Malone
Producers: Stephanie Hughes, Jules Kong
Accessibility Producer: Naomi Malone
Alliance of Resident Theatres New York 2010
Rehearsed Reading
Writer, director, producer: Jane Malone
Co-producer/ Accessibility Producer: Christine Bruno
Inclusion and Diversity
Cohabitation was Australia’s first universally accessible theatre production. A small community team worked with Vision Australia and Accessible Arts to develop an innovative captioning and audio description delivery service to ensure the play was accessible to D/deaf patrons or those with a visual impairment at every single performance. The script was developed in collaboration with members of the wheelchair community, and starred Anthony Masterson, himself a wheelchair user, in one of the first examples of authenticity in casting in Australia. It was produced in New York as a Rehearsed Reading, featuring actor and wheelchair user Mitch Longley (Desperate Housewives, Judging Amy), with American performance artist and disability advocate Christine Bruno producing.
Awards
Deafness Forum of Australia Members’ Choice Award
Medibank Australia Community Grant