Pillow Fight is SA’s newest fully sick theatre company; creating and delivering theatre in accessible, considerate, and well rested ways. The stories we tell will be candid, joyful, and humming with the tenacity it takes to access the world.
I’ve been producing, creating, writing, and performing theatre and it felt right to start presenting work under a banner that encompasses the ethos of how I work. In February this year I presented my show Benched at Midsumma Festival at Footscray Community Arts Centre as the debut show from Pillow Fight, and we enjoyed a sold out season. It’s fitting that our first show was made and rehearsed from a bed. Due to my disability I fight to leave my pillow to make theatre.
Pillow Fight is a place where the access needs of creatives, crew, and audiences, are not only met, but honoured and melded into the work.
If you missed Benched, I will be back on the bench at Darlinghurst Theatre Company in May 2022, again with various accessible live and digital viewing options for the show. Tickets on sale now and available here https://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/benched
The next work from Pillow Fight will be Pillow Talk, an intimate depiction of secrets shared with bedfellows that will be presented at First Draft Gallery in Sydney in an online exhibition curated by Riana Head-Toussant.
If that wasn’t enough, Pillow Fight are also developing my award-winning play How to Eat Rabbit, a searing one act play about the proximity of disability to the climate catastrophe, and we are pursuing partners and platforms for presentation of the show in 2023.
SA’s arts scene is going to be the richer and more accessible now that we have Pillow Fight. We prioritise working with artists who are also disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent, as well as queer, trans, gender diverse, First Nations, or POC.
Pillow Fight are already collaborating on the creation of new performance works with Ruby Allegra, a visual artist and disability activist who is also responsible for our arresting and playful logo. “We need a place to be soft and hard, to safely be our full selves, and tell our stories, our way.” Allegra said.
Pillow Fight in a sentence? A safe place to rest your head
Jamila Main 