Melbourne playwrights Darren Brealey and Stuart Pursell have conceived a deliciously witty and physical comedy, Comfort Zone portraying their view of Melbourne’s theatre scene.

Where did Comfort Zone come from? It started as they sat in darkened theatres, watching emerging playwrights tell their stories with minimal sets and props about talking chickens and displaced farm-wives or the arrested drunk and disorderly gentlefolk of the Northern Territory. These two playwrights couldn’t understand why the rhetoric being performed in front of them made it – on stage. The audience lapped up this diatribe of tasteless wooing and strutting, without an ounce of understanding of what they were watching, but they loved it – it was new theatre, so it must’ve been good.

Darren and Stuart decided their work made more sense, held powerful emotion and told a story the old fashioned way – beginning, middle and end. Yet, they couldn’t get produced. One night after another disappointing night at the theatre, they decided to purposely write a well crafted play, with a plot whose characters lives ironically disintegrate into the same type of bad play theatre companies produce.

Comfort Zone tells the story of a woman with more power than she deserves, whose lost touch with the reality of the industry she claims to have single-handedly created. Deirdre James is a protagonist clinging to the last bastion of power (let alone integrity) and in between programming her friend’s work and shagging the Art’s Minister’s PA, she flaunts herself with an air of superiority wrapped round a Greenroom Award. This is a woman who can make or break the drug and alcohol addictions of many aspiring playwrights. When Deirdre’s sexual favours for arts funding backfires, she is faced with a financial ultimatum that is delivered by a socially misfortunate lad who works for the Arts Minister. His news wreaks havoc upon their fragile lives.

This is extreme fringe. Expect to be entertained by a rather frank and honest opinion of how arts funding is decided and disseminated, a perception of the selection criteria for many theatrical managers and how they plan their theatre seasons.

This is a comedy about our view of what it’s really like to know someone in the upper echelons of power of the theatre world. It’s who you know and boy do we push that envelope. Keep in mind this is a tongue-in-cheek comedy that allows a good dose of laughter at ourselves as playwrights and artisans. Often we think we know what is going on behind closed doors – the question remains, “Is Comfort Zone pointing in the right direction?”