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Freak
A punchy and provocative new play by the Bruntwood Prize-winning author of Yen .
Georgie is thirty with dirty secrets. She drinks in her bedroom and hides from the sun. Leah is fifteen with teenage dreams. She practices her cum face and Veets. A lot. All-meat, all-sex, all-vulnerable, all-powerful. There's a first time for everything... Isn't there?
Freak premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014.
Anna Jordan 's play Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. Her other plays include Chicken Shop (Park Theatre, 2014), Freak (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 2014), Closer To God (Best Play and Audience Award at the Offcut Festival, 2009) and Just For Fun – Totally Random (Best New Writing at the Lost One Act Festival, 2009). As a director her work has included Crystal Springs (Eureka, San Francisco, 2014) and Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy by Jonathan Harvey at the National Theatre Shed as part of the 2013 Connections Festival. She is Artistic Director of Without a Paddle Theatre, and teaches acting and playwriting.
'stunningly well written... funny, raw, honest, deadpan... Jordan is a wonderful voice' - Exeunt Magazine
'Jordan’s strong script bubbles with a fierce intelligence... darkly funny' - Time Out
'Jordan’s writing is vivid and punchy... a taut, raw but also warm two-hander' - The Stage
'[has] a tenderness to match [its] dry wit... a frank new play by a fresh young voice' - A Younger Theatre
Georgie is thirty with dirty secrets. She drinks in her bedroom and hides from the sun. Leah is fifteen with teenage dreams. She practices her cum face and Veets. A lot. All-meat, all-sex, all-vulnerable, all-powerful. There's a first time for everything... Isn't there?
Freak premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014.
Anna Jordan 's play Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. Her other plays include Chicken Shop (Park Theatre, 2014), Freak (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 2014), Closer To God (Best Play and Audience Award at the Offcut Festival, 2009) and Just For Fun – Totally Random (Best New Writing at the Lost One Act Festival, 2009). As a director her work has included Crystal Springs (Eureka, San Francisco, 2014) and Tomorrow I’ll Be Happy by Jonathan Harvey at the National Theatre Shed as part of the 2013 Connections Festival. She is Artistic Director of Without a Paddle Theatre, and teaches acting and playwriting.
'stunningly well written... funny, raw, honest, deadpan... Jordan is a wonderful voice' - Exeunt Magazine
'Jordan’s strong script bubbles with a fierce intelligence... darkly funny' - Time Out
'Jordan’s writing is vivid and punchy... a taut, raw but also warm two-hander' - The Stage
'[has] a tenderness to match [its] dry wit... a frank new play by a fresh young voice' - A Younger Theatre
56 pages, Paperback
First published August 21, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 22, 2022
"This is the very last few moments of something. Then he's on top of me"
My introduction to this play came through someone telling me that despite loving this text, they could never, ever direct it. Having read through it now, I am inclined to agree. Mostly due to the fact this recommendation came from a man, and this play is unabashedly about how it feels to have sex, how it feels to be a woman - and why those two things don't always line up.
I have often spoken of how much more sex and violence I want to see onstage, and how we should just get more comfortable being and doing gross stuff. This play is the peak of that. A two-hander between a pair of women, at 15 and 30 years old, Jordan doesn't shy away from the alarming maturity of young women, and often sex dominates our minds. Mentions of veet, oral sex, and our own bodies litter the text and grant the whole endeavour an alarmingly brave sense of reality.
I am wary of split room conceits and how they split the centrality of theatrical spaces - an aspect I think is often essential to a dramatic conceit. HOWEVER, Jordan has an incredibly keen eye for what brings these women together, and through a combination of spoken song lyrics, overlapping dialogue, and genuinely joyous dance parties is quite successful in reminding us just how possible it is for each of these women to become the other, and vice versa. The way she narratively unites these women together, although not universally liked in other reviews, really grounded me in the materiality of female relationships - and for me, confirmed the necessity of this to be staged rather than filmed. Rather than providing this final link, I recommend you read it yourself - at a mere 30 pages, this show drives home the success of shorter theatre in tackling visceral images and subjects.
Unlikely to ever be put on in Canberra, but something I would love to both see and do.
My introduction to this play came through someone telling me that despite loving this text, they could never, ever direct it. Having read through it now, I am inclined to agree. Mostly due to the fact this recommendation came from a man, and this play is unabashedly about how it feels to have sex, how it feels to be a woman - and why those two things don't always line up.
I have often spoken of how much more sex and violence I want to see onstage, and how we should just get more comfortable being and doing gross stuff. This play is the peak of that. A two-hander between a pair of women, at 15 and 30 years old, Jordan doesn't shy away from the alarming maturity of young women, and often sex dominates our minds. Mentions of veet, oral sex, and our own bodies litter the text and grant the whole endeavour an alarmingly brave sense of reality.
I am wary of split room conceits and how they split the centrality of theatrical spaces - an aspect I think is often essential to a dramatic conceit. HOWEVER, Jordan has an incredibly keen eye for what brings these women together, and through a combination of spoken song lyrics, overlapping dialogue, and genuinely joyous dance parties is quite successful in reminding us just how possible it is for each of these women to become the other, and vice versa. The way she narratively unites these women together, although not universally liked in other reviews, really grounded me in the materiality of female relationships - and for me, confirmed the necessity of this to be staged rather than filmed. Rather than providing this final link, I recommend you read it yourself - at a mere 30 pages, this show drives home the success of shorter theatre in tackling visceral images and subjects.
Unlikely to ever be put on in Canberra, but something I would love to both see and do.
July 14, 2024
3.75 stars
December 21, 2014
Just superb!
December 15, 2016
How great is the distance in age when it comes to sex? Provocative and stirring, Anna Jordan's lingered in my mind long after I finished it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews