For today’s young adults, living with housemates has become a given, earning them the title of ‘the roommate generation‘. Award-winning writer and director Andi Colombo is bringing this universal experience to the stage in her new play, 32 Lavender Close. It’s an intimate and soft depiction of the unique bond that forms in a world where ‘housemate’ is a relationship of its own. The production has been made possible by the Theatre Arts Emerging Theatre Directors Bursary, Colombo being the recipient of 2024, and WoordFees.

The play sits with new housemates, Melo (Grace Matetoa) and Carly (Christie Van Niekerk), as they navigate their early 20s and the nuanced and complicated relationship that forms between two people who live together. From the everyday negotiations of finances, toothbrushes, exes and bathroom usage, to deeply personal explorations of the self, sexuality and the what’s-happening-to-my-body. At the heart of the narrative is the sense of softness, one that is usually hard to access and articulate outside of our most private spaces or those closest to us.

“What was really important to me when writing it was to write about things that women discuss at home with other women that we don’t see out in public,” says Colombo. “It talks openly about these things that we share amongst each other in moments of softness that are outwardly perceived in our society to be gross or something to lock away.” These are the moments that occur between two people who live together, who see the other at their most vulnerable and at times of inescapable undoneness.

In the home, the space that is so often one to hold what we don’t take outside is the bathroom, where the action in 32 Lavender Close takes place. “The bathroom becomes quite a highly contested and potent space in the house,” says Colombo. There is the fight for the bathroom, the privacy that it demands and the side-stepping when entering and exiting. Then there are the relationship-defining times when another person is let in to comfort, to hold the other’s hair back after a night out or to reassure the other that their vaginal discharge is normal.

In your early to mid-20s, many coming-of-age milestones—periods, pregnancy tests, moon cups—centre around the bathroom. These milestones, along with other happenings of twentysomething-year-olds, are often dismissed as small or unimportant in the media or they are not portrayed at all. “I wanted to make the experiences of 20-year-olds important and to give it the space to be seen as the epic coming-of-age and self-reflective time that it is,” says Colombo. 

“I hope that the audience walks out feeling a sense of empowerment to enter that stage,” adds Van Niekerk, “Or compassion when looking back at their former self.” It is at this stage of life that we begin to choose which parts of our upbringing we keep, which parts we modify and which parts we discard. In the play, this process is represented by Melo’s interest in collages. This is used both literally and metaphorically in the play itself as well as in its creation process.

Behind the scenes, Colombo has taken care to imbue the rehearsal space with the same softness that exists between the characters as well as bringing in these interdisciplinary means of creation. “The dynamic that I find interesting about collage is the making from things that already exist,” says Colombo, noting an inherent queerness within the process. “It is making that familiar strange or different and the idea that something has been taken out of context to then be recontextualised by you.” The actors have not only used visual collage in the creation process but have, in a way, have used the work of Sappho as a form of literary collage.

The archaic Greek poet has become synonymous with queerness, her work clearly referring to romantic love between two women (unless you’re an old historian, then it’s just about two really good friends). The exploration of sexuality is a theme which runs through 32 Lavender Close, with Carly and Melo coming to terms with their own and what that means in relation to each other. Sappho’s writing is fragmented, with only portions of it remaining and being pieced together, a fitting metaphor in the play’s rehearsal process. 

Her withstanding words “someone will remember us I say even in another time” are ones that are particularly pertinent within the play. Firstly, in the way that this story, and those like it, are just as valuable as the texts—the Shakespeares, Chaucers and Millers—that are considered timeless. The stories and revelations of those in their 20s are as pertinent as those of Hamlet or King Lear. “My descent to madness is just as important as Macbeth’s, which we are always forced to witness,” says Matetoa. “People have so many descents to madness, whether it’s a panic attack or not knowing how drunk you got. There is something about witnessing something so simple, yet so complex, that I really appreciate about this play.”

These texts are the ones continuously heralded as being timeless examples of how the ideal play should be structured. They are the reference point for the ‘well-made’ play, a phrase coined by Eugène Scribe in the nineteenth century, and it is still the default structure expected in scriptwriting. 

“If you look at the shape of this traditional structure, it’s quite a hard line,” explains Colombo. Phallic, for lack of a better word. It can feel propelled forward by high stakes, anger or aggression, all charging towards the play’s climax. 

“This is a relationship play,” she says. “And the trope in a relationship play is that the climax is a big argument. The challenge for me in this play was asking, how do two women who live together argue? How is that different in a way that is not rooted in our understanding of a heteronormative relationship? The climax isn’t necessarily the moment of emotional outpouring. It’s the moment when the relationship flips and can’t be unflipped.”

“I hope the audience leaves with a sense of having witnessed something important,” says Matetoa. The audience can expect an honest play and everything that comes with that—discomfort and the relief of not feeling alone. “It’s sometimes funny, sometimes sad and sometimes gross,” says Colombo. “Some people are going to hate it in its honesty.”

But for those who owe so much to the housemates who have shaped them, the bathroom conversations that have enlightened them and sapphic influences that have awoken them—from Sappho to Chappell Roan—you can catch 32 Lavender Close at Theatre Arts from 5-9 June at Theatre Arts. Book your tickets here.

Written and Directed by: Andi Colombo

Starring: Grace Matetoa and Christie Van Niekerk

Set Design: Ntobeko Ximba

Design Assistance: Siphiwe Gumede

Sound Design: Andi Colombo and Julian Schübel