KITTY LITTER, A Puzzle of Intention and Chaos

Break ups, break downs, stolen cats, revenge. KITTY LITTER does not waste time pretending its characters have it together. It throws you into an awkward reunion between two old friends, then hits the accelerator, watching petty payback spiral into a full-blown, living room disaster where one bad decision invites the next, and a cat ends up collateral damage.

On paper, it is the kind of premise that begs to be played purely for chaos. But what makes this raucous three-hander land is the craft underneath the carnage. Writer, producer and performer Hamish Johnston approaches playwriting the way he approaches acting, as a puzzle of intention and action, improvising his way into each character’s logic before refining it down to the sharpest, funniest choices. The result is comedy that does not soften the mess, it weaponises it, using silliness and escalation to slip past our defences and let something honest through.

That same push and pull shapes the production in the room.

Kitty Litter sits at the intersection of chaos and emotional truth. As a first-time playwright stepping out of a long acting career, what surprised you most about putting your own voice and instincts on the page rather than inside someone else’s script?

Hamish Johnston (writer, producer, and performer): I’ve found it a similar process in many ways. As an actor I love getting into the heads of the characters and deconstructing why they do what they do. Writing Kitty Litter was the same process, but the order was reversed. I knew where these three characters were moving from and got to discover what they would do next. Most of the writing process was me improvising all three characters. It was a blast. There was a lot of stream of consciousness writing, then refining and selecting the decisions I liked. In strange way I think I approached it in the same way I approach an existing script: as a puzzle to be solved. What intentions unlock these characters, and what actions reveal them to the audience.

The play leans hard into silliness and escalation rather than introspection. Why did it feel important to let comedy carry the weight of these characters’ adult anxieties instead of slowing things down or softening the mess?

Hamish Johnston: I’ve always loved comedy as a medium. I think it has a way of opening up an audience more than drama. In my experience, emotionally heavy dramas have to work to get through audiences defences as they are expecting turmoil. Comedy has the unique ability to invite the audience to take down their own defences, sit unguarded and be ready to fully receive moments of emotion.

Leaning into the escalation and silliness allows the audience to relate to the characters in a way that is less confronting for them. I want audiences to come and enjoying watching a melt down of catastrophic proportions. If they see themselves in the mess, all the better, but I don’t want to force it down their throats.

On a broader level, I just think it’s important to laugh. To be silly. Silliness isn’t taken seriously enough, in my opinion. It’s a beautiful thing, to lose yourself in chaos and fun, and not spend too long asking why. Funny is funny, sometimes thats enough.

With the world the way it is right now, with the division, with the constant barrage of atrocities main lined to your brain and the swipe of a thumb. Getting together for an hour and having a laugh feels like a joyous defiance, and a deeply necessary thing to do.

Your practice spans physical theatre, clowning, and experiential design. How did those influences shape the way Kitty Litter uses space, bodies, and momentum to turn an awkward reunion into something explosive?

Cameron Taylor (Director): Sounds a bit esoteric but a really big focus of mine for this piece is the energy exchange between the audience and the actor, something I learned through clown specifically.

When we go to the circus, we witness aw-inspiring, death defying, other world implying representations of what humanity can do! As an audience this uses a lot of energy! We want to keep giving our excitement and our cheers for each act but we fade. I’ve found that great clowns come out between the acts and give energy back to the audience, mid show refreshments, so that we can reinvest into the following act.

When a clown doesn’t do their job I’ve noticed the audience will leave feeling lethargic and tired, regardless of the quality of acts. You can hear it in the final applause and murmuring as everyone exits the tent.

I think the same thing can be applied to theatre, particularly the fast paced, intricate type of situational comedy that Johnston writes. We want to invest into characters chaotic emotional states and the layered text, but it is a great balancing act trying to bring energy back to the audience.

Luckily I’m working with a wildly funny team that have great inherent understanding of the exchange. In-fact, I’m writing this after our third day of rehearsals having witnessed them performing the show in its entirety and could not be more excited for audiences to experience them.

Your character balances volatility with emotional clarity. How did you approach grounding the chaos so the audience laughs without losing empathy for someone clearly coming undone?

Sian Crowe (performer): Robin lives and thrives in chaos, that is where she’s most comfortable. It’s so much fun playing Robin because she gets to make all of the impulsive and perhaps intrusive choices we sometimes wished we’d made when someone’s pushed us over the edge. My approach was to find justification for all of her actions, because then the audience can empathise with her and see the rationale of her choices. People will change their minds about Robin constantly as she unravels throughout the play, but I think Hamish has written her in a way that you’ll always have empathy for her, even when you’re laughing and even if you don’t always agree with her, you can understand why she’s done it. He’s made my job very easy!

Having recently worked in large-scale international productions, what excites you about performing this kind of intimate, high-risk comedy where the audience is so close you can almost feel their reactions shift in real time?

Sian Crowe: Being an intimate show, having the audience so close and amongst the action will give them a chance to feel as if these things are happening to them too. I love feeling the shift energetically when an audience is along for the ride with you. There’s nothing like that electricity of possibility when watching a show, it almost allows the audience to be fully present and be affected by what’s happening on stage. This is such a funny show, it’s incredibly chaotic, fast paced and thrilling, that I’m sure people will be both shocked, delighted and entertained. I can’t wait to experience those reactions in real time, it makes each night performing exciting and new.

You have spent decades refining comic rhythm onstage. How does that instinct change when you are part of a tightly wound three-hander where timing is shared, fragile, and constantly under threat of collapse?

Stuart Daulman (performer): When you’re doing stand-up or sketch, the timing is yours. The majority of the time, you control the pace, you choose when to hold, when to push… You can always steer it back if something goes sideways. In a three-hander, you don’t really get that luxury. The rhythm is shared, and so the instinct changes. I also had to relearn how to work with someone else’s words. In stand-up, everything is mine, the voice, the phrasing, the rhythms. Coming back to a fixed script after years of that has been a real challenge. What’s helped is working with Sian and Hamish. They’re incredibly precise with text and timing, and they make it look effortless. Watching them find the shape of a scene and lock into it is honestly amazing to watch esp considering the small amount of rehearsal time we have had as a group to work on this. And that’s pushed me to try to lift my game. Cameron has also been great in letting me make offers and play things out in the room. That freedom helps me find the physical shape of the scene, which makes the words and rhythms stick through the blocking rather than just trying to memorise them. I can’t chase laughs or “fix” moments the way I would onstage. Sometimes the right move is to let the silence sit, even if every stand-up instinct in me wants to jump in. When it’s working, it feels less like three people performing and more like one conversation that just happens to have an audience watching.

Kitty Litter walks a fine line between ridiculous behaviour and recognisable emotional damage. What tells you, as a comedian, when a moment needs to push further versus when it needs restraint?

Stuart Daulman: For me it comes down to truth. What’s true. As a comedian, your instinct is always to push, make it bigger, stranger, funnier. But in something like this, the laughs only really land if they come from a real place. Like I can relate to my character Brian, there are a few similarities here which I have been able to draw from. And so if you push so far that the audience stops believing the person, the scene might be funny, but it loses its weight. So I’m always checking in with: is this still about the character, or is it about getting a laugh? If it’s the second one, that’s usually a sign to pull it back and let the plot/action/direction do its job. When the emotion is clear, you can sometimes afford to go bigger because the audience knows where it’s coming from. When it’s fragile, restraint does more work than exaggeration.

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SEASON DETAILS
Dates: 6 – 11 February
Venue: The MC Showroom, Prahran
Runtime: 80 minutes (no interval)
Tickets: From $35
Bookings: CLICK HERE