Normal (Paperback)

An urban detective story in which the investigator is a teenage girl and the body is her own. Poppy has developed a tic. A twitch. A spasm. It spreads through her body, then her group of school friends and before long, the whole town. Nobody can explain it, but as the disease spreads, the community begins to fracture along lines that turn into deep fissures. Who or what is to blame? And how are they going to fix it? Inspired by the true story of 'the town that caught Tourette's', this new work by award-winning playwright Katie Pollock is dark, provocative and theatrically inventive. Normal is the winner of the Inscription/Edward Albee Playwriting Scholarship and the Ingenious Grant from Town Hall Theatre, MA (USA).

Katie Pollock is a Sydney-based playwright. Her plays for theatre are Normal, The Becoming, The Hansard Monologues: Age of Entitlement, Blue Italian/Nil by Sea, The Hansard Monologues: A Matter of Public Importance, The Blue Angel Hotel, A Quiet Night in Rangoon, A Girl Called Red, and numerous short works. Her plays and adaptations for radio are Beetroot: A bloody journey through roots and belonging, Nil by Sea, Contact, O is for Oxygen, and Blue Italian. Her works have been produced by the ABC, Apocalypse Theatre, Casula Powerhouse, Eastside FM, Hothouse Theatre, Merrigong Theatre, Museum of Australian Democracy, New Theatre, Newtown Theatre, Old 505 Theatre, Redline Productions, Seymour Centre, Site & Sound Festival, subtlenuance, Sydney Fringe Festival, Tamarama Rock Surfers and The Street Theatre. She is the winner of the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award, the Martin Lysicrates Prize, the inaugural Town Hall Theatre (USA) 'Ingenious' grant, the Inscription/Edward Albee Playwriting Scholarship and Hothouse Theatre's Solo competition. She has been nominated for two AWGIES and was a finalist in two Silver Gull Awards and the Woodward/Newman Drama Award (USA). She holds a Masters in Theatre from the University of New South Wales. For further information and to access her radio works see: katiepollock.com