Rockston Stories

Rockston Stories shatters expectations, in an absurdly comic confrontation with the truth about addiction and the world around us.

Rockston Stories is set within a live cabaret show, but this is a cabaret with a difference. After a musical performance from a young cabaret performer Sophie, we are immersed into her struggle with addiction. High on cocaine she happens upon a ghostly figure from 20th century Hoxton 'Ted', a father and chemical addict in recovery. Ted is searching Hoxton in a quest to find his estranged daughter Tracy, last seen outside Hoxton Hall in 1985 selling illegal highs. While Ted stakes out the Hall, parallel worlds of the building and its surroundings arise to greet him. The spaces become scattered with stories of people living through addiction (chemical or otherwise), some of whom are attempting to repair their lives. As Ted travels between these worlds, he is joined by characters who share their own intimate experiences simulating a single moment when they faced an abyss, portraying the moment through song, a comic interaction or sometimes without comment. Throughout the piece Tahlia and Ted collide, gradually revealing each other's stories and the parallels that exist, Tahlia unveils her own grief for her late father and their developing bond acts as a catalyst for Tahlia to finally begin to resolve her own struggle with addiction.

The different worlds that emerge clash against each other, creating new worlds, new perceptions that are enhanced through cathartic humour and live music, creating an explosive dissonance between self-reflection and complete immersion. The audience will experience the show through the perspective of someone in active drug addiction who is travelling through time and space shattering expectations in a confrontation with the truth about addiction, and the world around us.