LUNG returns online on La Mama On Screen during Senior Festival 2024, Oct 21 – Oct 27.
A radio play performed live on stage.
Lung is a rich new radio play about serious illness, the changes it wreaks, and the will to survive.
Anna is a smart, successful and ambitious corporate lawyer who needs a life-saving lung transplant. For the first time she is forced to think about Life and Death. As the illness mounts, she confronts the loss of her former self, changes in all her relationships, and a wholly uncertain future. She begins to change. Her Lungs, like a sceptical Greek chorus, note her journey with wry humour.
Writer Kate Herbert brings to life a woman we can all recognise, while enriching the narrative with surreal and imaginary sequences. The play will be “staged” with the actors behind microphones, no set, and minimal lighting. The audience’s imagination will be fully wired!
LUNG was commissioned in 2021 by Victorian Seniors Festival for Radio Reimagined.
“In this thoroughly engaging story of a lung transplant, wry comedy mixes with fear and frustration.
“There is not a false note to the whole enterprise. Kate Herbert’s dialogue is fresh, natural but never predictable and director Nancy Black achieves a fine, pacy rhythm to the performances.”
“We hang on every word and it’s all great fun.”
– Michael Brindley, Stage Whispers. May 2024
Listen to ABC Radio Melbourne interview on LUNG with Kate Herbert and Nancy Black:
Hit & Run, La Mama, 2001:
“Director Nancy Black has (Nikki) Coghill and (Stewart) Morritt spiralling round each other in a mesmerising descent to madness.” – Blanche Clark, Herald Sun
Bully Virus, La Mama, 2018:
“Using verbatim techniques, Herbert brings us 5 harrowing stories of workplace bullying.” – Samsara Dunston, 4 stars
“Directed and written by Kate Herbert, Bully Virus is a satirical yet moving examination of the workplace, uncovering its most scandalous and traumatic moments.” – Rose Battaglia, Milk Bar Mag
Content Warnings: References to surgical procedures, lung disease and terminal illness.
Written by Kate Herbert
Directed by Nancy Black
Performed by Nikki Coghill, Geoff Wallis, Tony Rive, Carmelina Di Guglielmo and Alison Richards
Sound design by Elissa Goodrich
Image created by Joe Calleri
