Patrick Livesey's mother took her own life in 2015. While mourning her, a number of questions began to gnaw away at Livesey's mind, including how did this happen and who was to blame? To answer these, Livesey spent over 30 hours interviewing people who knew their mother and it was these conversations that guided their new play, Naomi, which will have its Melbourne premiere at the Melbourne Fringe Festival next month.
Sharing such a story with strangers and with Naomi's friends and family was never going to be easy but it was something Livesey felt compelled to do. "Very early on after mum died, there was this feeling that this was something I wanted to share with people. It became clear to me how much storytelling is a means of healing or finding hope in total darkness. When my mum died, the stories I told myself about her and about what happened were what I clung to for survival. They were by far the most important tools for me in figuring out how to deal with the grief so as a storyteller myself *flips hair* it seemed obvious that at some point I would share those stories.” Livesey laughs.