Outloud warmly invites you to a series of intimate performances and conversations, ABOUT US. Running on select Friday & Thursdays evenings throughout April, May & June, ABOUT US is 10 online readings of incredible stories, plays and books co-curated and created by the many cultural communities in Western Sydney.

Join us and the artists for a rehearsed reading and facilitated conversation afterwards, to share your own stories, thoughts and ideas around what these texts say about who we are, what we care about, how COVID has affected these communities here and abroad, and how we can support each other from here on.

You can find out about the other performances we have going on & reserve your tickets for those here: https://outloud.org.au/project...

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FRIENDS & DARK SHAPES

Shortlisted for The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, Queensland Literary Awards, 2021 and Shortlisted for New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards The UTS Glenda Adams Award, 2022

A group of friends moves into a share house in Redfern. They are all on the cusp of thirty and big life changes, navigating insecure employment and housing, second-generation identity, online dating and social alienation—and one of them, our narrator, has just lost her father.

How do you inhabit a space where the landscape is shifting around you, when your sense of self is unravelling? What meaning does time have in the midst of grief?

Through emotionally rich vignettes tinged with humour, Friends & Dark Shapes sketches the contours of contemporary life. It is a novel of love and loss, of constancy and change. Most of all, it is about looking for connection in an estranged world.

CAST

Writers: Kavita Bedford

Readers:
Marie-Jo Orbase
Ayah Darwich

Contains themes of grief and loss, racism and gentrification

CONTENT NOTES: To be announced.