Please Come Again

Written by Eric Bogosian in the early '90s and then turned into a Richard Linklater film, the action centres around a group of young people who hang around the car park of a 7-Eleven, trying to work out what they want to do with their lives as they wait for their successful rockstar friend to return from out of town.

A far cry from the play's venue in the charmingly arty environs of Abbotsford Convent, Spellicy describes the carpark setting as representing “any sort of suburban hell-hole in the middle of anywhere.” Anonymity and ennui are the order of the day, and nothing says that better than the forecourt of an all-night convenience chain store.

The characters want to get out of the suburban wasteland they find themselves in, but there are barriers in the way, both real and imagined. Spellicy explains; “All [of them] are very frustrated, alienated and insecure. Some of them live in this kind of imagined future that they see for themselves, and haven't got a clue how to get there.”

In the meantime, the carpark is where they meet. “It's the pre-internet age, and in those days there wasn't any such thing as a global community. Wherever you had the fortune or misfortune to be born, you had to find members of your tribe if you were going to have a chance in hell of not sinking into the quicksand of suburbia. You had to find the other freaks and weirdos and creative types to collaborate with and support each other.”

After growing up in Adelaide, Spellicy knows teenage disenchantment when he sees it. “There's a part of Adelaide that's cool, which is about the size of a postage stamp, but the rest of it is just unadulterated suburbs.” For him, breaking free was all about using his imagination “I made the choice with my friends to form a band, create my own reality and get out.” After focussing on music and filmmaking, he has only moved into theatre directing recently, a transition he describes as “a challenge, and quite a thrill.”

As the second decade of the 20th century unfolds, Spellicy – who was in his mid-20s at the height of the '90s – is part of a generation who came of age in the Slackers era and are now starting to look back. You can put your Nirvana t-shirts, flannel shirts and Dr Martens away though; he's adamant that the play is far from just a bit of retro indulgence. “It's not a nostalgia piece and it doesn't feel at all dated. It almost feels like it's examining the seed of a kind of malaise that is now in full bloom.” He gives an example: “There's a kind of paralysis in one of the central characters, where if he can't do something extraordinary straight away he doesn't want to do anything at all... I feel like that [kind of] paralysis seems to be almost an epidemic among people who are the same age as the play's characters in 2012.”