The Moth & The Moon - 2016

This project was concerned with mapping the major issues, concerns and stories of young people across the Gold Coast. The result of this process was the identification of six issues that young people thought were taboo and consequently felt were not being dealt with in their lives at school or at home but were of great importance to them.

The loose areas of concern they identified throughout this process were Mental Illness, Stress and Anxiety, Relationships with Parents, Self Concept, Fears for the Future and Sleep Deprivation.

We decided to mine the issue of Sleep Deprivation even further and discovered that the young people we were working with were only achieving an average of 5 ½ to 6 hours of sleep per night. We transcribed hundreds of hours of interviews with young people (which makes for disturbing bedtime reading) but broadly speaking what was keeping young people up at night, was the stories that took us back to where we started – the sources of sleeplessness were Mental Illness, Stress and Anxiety, Relationships with Parents, Self Concept and Fears for the Future.

The other thing that was revealed was that many young people’s lives are really adult lives. They are, like us, juggling study, work and relationships and even in many cases contributing very significantly to the running of households. All of these commitments are happening while they are then being treated as “kids” in many contexts. The dominant adult view of young people being “Kids with no commitments and not a care in the world” was perhaps a little outdated for many young people. 

So when we talked through these stories and transcripts with young people the thing that became apparent was that to do their stories justice we were going to have to “tell it as it was” and to include the darker aspects of their lives. The reason was not a morbid fascination with the challenges young people faced but a knowledge that the sharing of these stories is actually liberating.

The words “I thought I was the only one” have been echoing throughout the process and young people have expressed great relief in knowing that they are not alone at all. The sharing of their stories has actually allowed for young people to talk openly about themselves and to support one another. Because, the thing about sharing darkness is that others are able to shine a light on it. And suddenly we can view our challenges as a normal if unpleasant part of the road. And so the The Moth and The Moon was born, not as a study of the darkness but as a suggestion of how we move towards the light. 

And that is our hope for the play moving forward. That young people will see themselves and their friends in this work and that this will start conversations that are worthwhile having. The Moth and The Moon does more than capture the stories of young people’s current concerns. It shines a light on a way out of the darkness and that we can see that our biggest opportunity for growth and healing is to be found in each other and the reflections we give each other. And maybe we can all try to consciously be the Moon to another’s Moth when we’re able.   

And as an adult audience, when we see these stories of young adults on stage knowing they have come directly from young people’s lives, hopefully we can take a moment to pause and to pay them the respect that they richly deserve for trying to navigate the world in exactly the same way we are trying to.