Shattered Reflection 

 

Shattered Reflection is a real play, by a real playwright, daring audiences to confront what lies beneath the surface. It’s a story about us: our fragility, our resilience, and the razor’s edge we walk between breakdown and breakthrough.

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Our 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival production was a lifetime ago. Our perception of mental illness has improved, our fears have dissipated, slightly, yet our struggles continue and increase. The 2008 version is vastly changed to our 2026 version. Improved. Understood. Articulated.

 

Shattered Reflection intends to be a story told with unflinching honesty, to hold a mirror to our generation, and to share reflection with our future. Such is the power of the stage. This project is designed to stage a new piece of contemporary theatre at the 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival, based on a framework of lived experience, raw confession, and bold theatricality.

 

It is the story of Christine; high-powered, isolated, addicted, and haunted, whose repeating birthday celebration spirals into a storm of hallucination, violence, and fragile hope.

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The play’s core is built around fractured relationships between lovers, family, fantasy, and reality, embodied by a small, but diverse cast who challenge us to see addiction and mental illness not as spectacle, but as deeply human.

 

This is not a caricatured drama about “madness” or “meltdown.” It is a work of depth, tension, and startling clarity.

The main themes include:

• Trauma and Memory: the shadows of childhood abuse, carried into adulthood

• Mental Illness: the stigma, the misunderstanding, the desperate search for help

• Love and Desire: intimacy blurred by transaction, control, and yearning

• Power and Isolation: a woman who has everything, yet nothing can save her

• Comedy and Cruelty: moments of wit and absurdity against looming despair

• Reflection: the shattering of self, and the struggle to piece it back together

 

 

Research and Development

Born from rigorous workshops and table reads, Shattered Reflection has evolved into a lean, electric one‑act play, plunging us into Christine’s world. Ambition, addiction, and the fragile line between fantasy and truth. The latest draft locks in a cathartic, hope‑tinged finale and a staging concept shifting like a mind under pressure, from penthouse glamour to clinical reality.

 

 

Defined Method of Approach

We’ll build an immersive, dual‑location set to fracture and recombine before your eyes. Rehearsals focus on psychological truth: intimacy choreography, mental‑health consultation, and precise rhythm so humour, danger, and tenderness land without sensationalism. Lighting and sound will glide from seductive to stark to mirror Christine’s inner weather.

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The Playwright

Darren Brealey crafts bold, compassionate theatre to stare down stigma. His writing fuses dark wit with fierce empathy, inviting audiences to hold complexity: a brilliant career woman, a bruised past, a night that unravels, and a hand offered in the dark.

 

Darren's heritage is full of strong women. 

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Project Deliverables and Desired Outcomes

• Premiere season at 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival (venue TBC)

• 10 performances with an opening night post‑show conversation on mental health and recovery

• Professionally produced marketing suite (trailer, production stills, press kit)

• Accessible performance (open captions) and community engagement partners

• A transferable production bible to tour post‑Fringe

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Background

Christine turns forty with champagne bravado and a plan to “finally fall in love.” When a hired companion and his partner arrive (later on), the night slips from flirtation to confession, from control to crisis.

 

By dawn’s light, reality asserts itself: a hospital, a receptionist hurt, and a doctor who won’t promise miracles, only the patience to help someone gather their scattered pieces.

 

 

Scope

Shattered Reflection is an artistic project with the intent to deliver the following inclusions:

 

• People: Director, 3 actors (1F, 2M), stage/production manager, designer, LX/SX ops

• Design: Transforming set, costumes, SFX/LX design, publicity assets

• Operations: Venue hire, rehearsal space, insurances, festival fees

• Care: Mental-health advisor, intimacy coordination, accessibility

• Humanity: The play explores human frailty, resilience, and compassion, grounding extreme situations in recognisable truths.

• Comedy: Dark humour threads through Christine’s story, offering moments of relief that sharpen the tragedy.

• Challenging Perceptions of Gender: Characters and situations expose how gender roles and expectations can confine, distort, or liberate identity.

• Haven: The tension between imagined safe spaces and their collapse. Christine’s penthouse, her fantasies, and the hospital define the play’s shifting landscapes.

• International Perspectives: Characters’ backgrounds and experiences bring diverse cultural views into Christine’s world, highlighting global resonance of mental health struggles.

• Contrasting Female Stories: Christine’s journey contrasts against absent or implied women mothers, colleagues, and imagined rivals underscoring the varied pressures women face.

• Community Spirit: Despite isolation, the play asks whether shared understanding between doctor, guard, and patient can build a sense of community in crisis.

• Transgender Character: Though not central, the narrative acknowledges fluid identities, challenging assumptions of sexuality and desire.

• Sexual Preference: The play explores sexuality as both intimacy and transaction, revealing how orientation intersects with survival and love.

• Financial Standing: Wealth is shown as a veneer Christine’s money cannot purchase stability or authentic connection.

• Class / Social Standing: Corporate power, sex work, and security work collide, highlighting class contrasts within a single night.

• Personality: Fragmented personalities Christine’s selves, Amy, Bobby embody the fractured self-image at the heart of the play.

• Religious Beliefs: Subtextual references to morality, sin, and judgment frame Christine’s search for redemption and condemnation.

• Marital Status & Family: Christine’s inability to form lasting bonds, contrasted with her brothers, lovers, and absent parents, shows family as both wound and longing.

• Employment Status: Work executive roles, sex work, hospital security becomes identity and survival, shaping each character’s choices.

 

 

What We Need & What You Get

We’re raising $25,000 to stage Shattered Reflection at its full power.

Your support funds artists’ wages, set & costumes, rehearsal room, venue, and audience access.

Suggested Giving Levels

• $50 Supporter: Thank‑you on our website + priority news

• $150 Friend: Above + digital rehearsal diary + priority ticket window

• $500 Patron: Above + signed show poster + meet‑the‑cast night

• $1,000 Associate Producer: Above + your name in the program + 2 tickets

• $2,500 Producer Circle: All perks + backstage tour + signed script + 4 tickets

 

Ready to help us put this story on stage?

You have two options:

1. Visit the Contact Us page to express your interest. Enter your email to commence the conversation and receive your donor link and early‑bird ticket access. We’ll send one concise update when donations open, plus behind‑the‑scenes milestones. No inbox clutter.

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OR

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2. Return to the top of this page and click on the Donate button. Change the counter to the increment of $50 donations you wish to make. You can either remain anonymous or contact us via the Contact Us page to make note of your donation.

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The Impact

Shattered Reflection invites empathy over judgement.

 

This play reframes a “public incident” as a private history: trauma, survival, the courage to try again. Your donation doesn’t just fund a production, it fuels conversations that reduce shame and open doors to care. Audience members will leave with language for what they’ve lived or what a loved one is living, right now.

 

 

Risks & Challenges

Fringe is fast, visible, and competitive. Budget pressure, venue availability, and marketing noise are real. Our mitigations: modular set to control costs, an earned‑media plan, partnerships with community orgs, and a contingency reserve. We scale responsibly without compromising artistic or psychological safety.

 

 

Other Ways You Can Help

• Share this page and tag friends who love bold new theatre

• Introduce us to sponsors, venues, or media

• Volunteer front‑of‑house during the season

• Offer in‑kind support (printing, rehearsal space, photography)

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Please spread the word. It would be amazing if you could share to the world on social media our desire to create world-class theatre by independent artists.

 

We would love to be able to produce Shattered Reflection.

 

LET'S MAKE SOME NOISE

 

We are grateful and appreciate your donation and support.

 

Should you be unable to provide financial assistance, you can still help.

Please spread this to the world on social media.

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