High energy, darkly comic and enriched with powerful imagery comes acclaimed Perth-based writer/director Luke Milton’s new collaborative work Nobody Cares But You.

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Nobody Cares But You is series of five monologues performed and co-worked by Swan Theatre’s Arielle Gray about different women fighting to be accepted in a world that is really not going their way.

Premiering at The Blue Room Studio, Milton hopes to thrill and ‘exhaust’ his audience with his stories of a young girl killing for attention, a dead actress attempting to resurrect her career, a plucky girl scout solving an adult problem, a housewife discovering a secret and a super-heroine learning the hard way that ‘you can’t punch love’.

‘I was interested in the character of a female serial killer and what it takes for her to kill and the preparation she will need since she doesn’t have the physical strength of a man,’ Milton said.

Widely recognised for his more vulgar boyish humour, Milton said Nobody Cares But You was a maturing of his work that took him outside his comfort zone.

‘I couldn’t connect with (a female character) easily so it became a metaphor for my writing and because of how she looked or the situation she was in, she wasn’t being taken seriously and the lengths she had to go to, to get noticed,’ he said.

‘It’s a bit a tongue in cheek about my writing but I have drawn in personal things and I think you will find truthful moments in each situation that the audience can connect with.’

Milton enjoyed collaborating with Gray whom he credits with coming up with the idea of playing all female roles and whose delivery largely moulded the characters.

‘I was interested in her playing a male in one of the monologues but she wasn’t really sure because she felt she was too feminine and girly,’ Milton said.

‘I said, ‘You are really feminine and girly’, so we began to play on that and from that the design began to unfold and we were able to collect a lot of imagery.

‘She’ll pull me up occasionally if there’s a line she wouldn’t say or that is sounding too blokey but the number of sentences I have dropped can be counted on one hand.’

Milton also utilises his photography and comic-drawing abilities to create a series of projections for each monologue and they are accompanied by an original music score by local musician Steve Hearne.

Nobody Cares But You is premiering as part of Perth’s Pride Festival before travelling to Melbourne and later being performed at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Nobody Cares But You runs from October 15 to 31. Tickets can be booked by contacting 9227 7005 or online at www.blueroom.org.au

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