Description

After the murder of her husband, Celia has shut herself and her 16-year-old daughter Zoë away, toiling on a peach farm in the middle of nowhere. The arrival of two young people to help during picking season heralds the beginning of the end for Celia’s safe existence.

Her daughter falls in love with enigmatic, erratic Kieran, but when the relationship is threatened, they run away together. The safe, perhaps smothering, world that Celia has created unravels; her paranoia and insecurities amplified to full volume. Playing out alongside her fear, we see the increasingly degrading and dangerous lifestyle that the two elopers have fallen into.

The Peach Season is a powerful, salutary tale showing what it’s like to be a young person desperate for independence, but also, crucially, what it’s like to be a parent during the painful process of letting children fly the nest.

Biography

Debra Oswald

DEBRA OSWALD is a playwright, novelist and screenwriter, and a two-time winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Her stage plays have been performed around the world, including Gary’s House, Sweet Road, Mr Bailey’s Minder and The Peach Season. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences – Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. Debra was the creator and head writer on the successful TV series Offspring. Her other television credits include episodes of Police Rescue, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Debra has published nine children’s books and four adult novels, including The Family Doctor and One Hundred Years of Betty. She performed her one-woman show Is There Something Wrong With That Lady? at Griffin Theatre in 2021 and the Ensemble in 2023.

Photo Credit: Alex Vaughan