A love letter to best friendship from acclaimed indie theatre artists VIMH.

Holly and Sam are the best of the best. Or they want to be. They share a dream – to join the most elite squad in competitive summer sport: ballkids at the Australian Open. It’s their first day of training and they don’t know yet that they’re not going to make the cut or that they’re going to meet their best friend for the first time ever.

Ballkids takes this chance encounter and chucks it in a blender, jump-cutting through the next two decades of Holly and Sam’s shared life together. It is an odyssey of the most ordinary proportions, mapping the starburst force of platonic romance and the constant work of staying connected.

Funny and moving, excruciatingly human, Ballkids is an ode to lonely kids and what happens when they find each other. Written by Liv Satchell (two-time Green Room Award winner) and presented by multi-award-winning theatre company VIMH (The Grief TrilogySIRENSThe View From Up Here), Ballkids insists that friendship is as strong and important as a beating heart. 

This project is supported by the Robert Salzer Foundation.

2024, Green Room Award for Best New Writing for Independent Theatre: I sat and waited but you were gone too long by Liv Satchell with Chanella Macri and Emily Tomlins

2022, Green Room Award for Best New Writing for Independent Theatre: let bleeding girls lie by Liv Satchell with Chanella Macri, Belinda McClory and Emily Tomlins

2022, Emerging Company Incubator Award, supported by Monash University: SIRENS by Benjamin Nichol for Melbourne Fringe Festival

2022, SA Touring Award, supported by Adelaide Fringe: SIRENS by Benjamin Nichol for Melbourne Fringe Festival

★★★★★“It’s dazzling to see work tailored with such skill to such unique artists.” – Theatre Matters on I sat and waited but you were gone too long

★★★★“[SIRENS] strikes a delicate, powerful chord” – The Age

Content Warnings: Coarse Language, sexual references, use of sudden loud sound, use of haze, audience use of party poppers.

Performed by Izabella Yena and Michelle McCowage

Written by Liv Satchell

Directed by Julian Dibley-Hall with Liv Satchell

Sound Design by Tom Backhaus

Lighting Design by John Collopy

Production Design by Filipe Filihia

Movement Direction by Xanthe Beesley

Assistant Directed by Freya McGrath

Stage Managed by Ashleigh Walwyn

Produced by VIMH

Image by Jack Dixon-Gunn

THE FRIENDSHIP MAP

VIMH’s latest work Ballkids (or, scenes from a friendship) is seeking anonymous contributions from our community (you!) about the role that our friends play in our lives.

We want to celebrate this most underappreciated form of human connection by sharing your stories about your friends. We will share contributions made through this form every Friday in the lead-up to our season and we will also add them to a Friendship Map in the La Mama Courthouse foyer for audiences to read pre and post-show (with the option to contribute their own stories too).

We want this project to encourage people to message somebody they love – the friend who saved them on the first day of school; who always finds them on a dancefloor; who slips into the same easy conversation no matter how much time has passed.

We want this project to revalue friendship as an essential force in all of our lives.

Fill in the form HERE


Access Information:

Visual rating 50%: Events are partly subtitled or include dialogue, background music and/or sounds, so d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences can have some engagement with the event.

Aural Rating 50%: Has both sound and visual components, but sight isn’t essential to be able to engage with the event.