By Anthony Plevey // Photos by Hannah Grogan

An Aussie Road Trip Like No Other

Central West NSW-based performance company Lingua Franca adopts an interdisciplinary approach that draws together artists from different disciplines to collaborate on physical theatre-based dramatic works.

Remounting Mary Anne Butler‘s 2014 work, Highway of Lost Hearts, Director Adam Deusien has combined Kate Smith’s consummate acting talents with the songwriting and performance prowess of musical duo Abby Smith and Sophie Jones, aka Smith & Jones, to deliver a unique take on the road trip genre.

“We all know the road trip trope; it’s a familiar one,” says Smith and Jones member Abby Smith. “Highway of Lost Hearts‘ story is familiar but also singular; turned around to be from an Australian female viewpoint.”

The story is thus: protagonist Mot wakes up one morning to find her heart missing. So, she decides to go and look for it. Mot and her dog head out, travelling along the Highway of Lost Hearts, journeying into the Australian outback’s dead centre to recover what is lost.

“It captures that sense of a campfire/back bar yarn,” says Abby. “That part of Australian culture and its theatrical telling of tall stories calls on the audience to imagine, stare past the stage, look into the campfire embers, and conjure what is happening.

“Journeying across the interior from Kununurra to Sydney, actor Kate Smith embodies multiple characters as Mot navigates the emotional landscape of her loss,” Abby continues. “She encounters familiar Aussie stereotypes; the kind-of bogan in the pub or ‘Shirl‘ behind the grocery counter, from whom Butler’s turn of phrase elicits curious interactions, creating a sort of magic realism.”

Paired with this Gabriel Garcia-esque magic realism is ritual and symbolism.

“Mot’s journey is marked by the making-camp ritual of unpacking and packing, which is the crux of the story,” Abby states. “She is unpacking and gathering the pieces of her story and her heart, packing them away, taking them back out, and even giving them to other people as she journeys.”

And no great soul-searching road trip would be complete without A Good Boy for a travelling companion.

“Mot’s dog, however, is a scripted interlocutor with needs that call Mot back from her search and back to The Now,” Abby explains. “The dog needs a pat; the dog needs a bone. So Mot must, by looking after the dog, just get on with what’s happening right now.”

Beginning their collaboration with Lingua Franca in 2020, Smith & Jones had to reflect on both the script and Deusien’s approach to produce a ‘soundtrack’ to wrap around Butler’s script.

“Every famous road trip movie, book or old-fashioned radio programme all have soundtracks, another layer to give the story its sense of time and place,” Abby reflects. “So our role in terms of sound is meant to come across as the radio playing or a half-remembered song.

“Time and place have always been significant in our work, but we took a completely different approach with this project because we’re reflecting on someone else’s work,” Abby explains.

“The language that Mary Anne Butler uses to describe the dead heart of Australia and her feelings about Mot’s journey affected our writing more than the landscapes’ actual, raw physicality.

“We’ve done a lot of travel around Australia, which is integral to that, too,” Abby continues. “We feel Mot’s travels, her unpacking and packing, in the physicality and emotional impact of actually doing gigs.”

As well as gifting their music to bring the piece to life, the duo play a more physical role.

“Beyond our writing the songs, in the show, we come in and out to propel the story and give its wonder, the awe and the sadness, a solidness,” Abby reveals. “Under Adam’s direction, we move around the stage, evoking Mot’s wandering, and perhaps, it’s really up to the watcher to decide; we could be her heart coming back to her, or we could also be, maybe not spirits, but memories of people.

“Whatever we are, we are companions on Mot’s journey, a physical representation of her heart, thoughts, and feelings, and wrap around her that way.”

And like a fulfilling road trip, we end at the beginning.

“So it comes back to the road trip trope,” Abby says in closing.

“What’s a road trip if not a search for something, whether you know what it is or not?”

Highway of Lost Hearts plays at The Q, Queanbeyan, 6-7 June. Tickets range from $30 – $59.90 and are available from theq.net.au