the voice in my hands

“I thought I’d let her know I made it after all.”

Tilly and Egg have been waiting for their mother to find them. They haven’t seen her since she disappeared during a game of hide-and-seek when they were kids.

They’re middle-aged when Tilly receives two letters from her. She’s dead. Egg’s in prison, and Tilly needs special permission to visit and let her know.

Tilly was supposed to keep Egg close but it’s only the spectre of their mother that now brings them back together.

my sister feather is the second play in a trilogy of works by Olivia Satchell about grief, memory and the female body. Written for two of Melbourne’s leading performers Belinda McClory and Emily Tomlins, this world premiere has been shortlisted for the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights’ Award and Max Afford Playwrights’ Award.

You can find some of the critical responses to this work below.

“Satchell’s text masterfully crafts these characters in this moment. Very little in this play is extraneous to this fragment of these women’s lives, but they are such complete portraits that we feel like we know their whole story, even though we really don’t.”

Witness – Review

“As the sisters, Tomlins and McClory are simply superb. “

Timeout Melbourne – Review

“[T]his is a play of intensity and courage that swims in a sea of complex femininity”

Theatre People – Review

“My Sister Feather is a terrific play, fully resourced in terms of theatricality, sensitively understated and well- constructed.”

ArtsHub – Review

“It was my first time attending a show at La Mama. With its proud history of fostering and supporting great Australian talent (Cate Blanchett and Judith Lucy among their alumni), my expectations were high and I was not disappointed.”

Stage Whispers – Review

Creatives

the voice in my hands (VIMH) produces bold original new work and provides ongoing development opportunities for new writing for performance.

VIMH pursues risk, rigour, and care in everything it does.

I read an article a while ago about a woman who tried to write a minimum of 100 applications a year. Not only did she inevitably have some success (my Dad once gave me the dating advice that if I asked out 100 people, statistically 3% would say yes), but she kept a data log of each application to track feedback, the development of her ideas, and to remind herself that ultimately a lack of success is not necessarily because her idea or even her application was substandard. Given the probabilistic nature of success, if one of her applications was used again with a different granting body, it might well be successful without altering a single word.

As part of VIMH’s commitment to sharing resources as well as to embracing the value of failure, this is a centralised database of a curated collection of Melbourne and Sydney-based arts applications (including prizes, funding, workshops, etc):

find it here

It is by no means comprehensive and will be built upon weekly.

Please email thevoiceinmyhands@gmail.com if you’d like anything to be included.