Playwright and actor Laneikka Denne's play Dead Skin, written when she was just 17 years old, took out the 2019 Flinders University Young Playwrights’ Award. That same year, it also enjoyed a first staged reading as part of the 2019 Storytellers Festival at Kings Cross Theatre (KXT). She became the youngest writer ever to be published by Australian Plays, and the first under-18 recipient of the full-time Meisner Scholarship to the Actors Pulse. She was also awarded the Ann McDonald Scholarship twice to attend the McDonald College for Acting.
Now you have another chance to see Dead Skin as it returns to KXT – located in the belly of Kings Cross Hotel across from the Coke sign – fully formed after the year that wasn’t. Running through to April 17, it champions a fresh and exciting take on young queer voices in this country, as written by someone who knows what they are talking about. Denne describes the play as “a hybrid text of queer and hetero ‘love’ stories that challenge what it truly means to love and be loved at 17”.
It’s a tender coming-of-age story that features two 17-year-olds, Andie and Andrea, who work in a convenience store and find themselves thrust into the midst of a fragile, fledgling relationship. It also explores the flows and eddies of a mother and daughter navigating the toxicity of their own relationships, and that aching need for maternal connection. Tickets are $42 or $30 concession, and under-30s can apply code KXT20for20s for a discount on Thursday night performances.