Living Rooms: Scenes in a Family Mansion

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Living Rooms is the fifth play in the Picture Play series by Paul Davies. It was originally produced by TheatreWorks as a site-specific work in 1986. The play takes place entirely within an historic mansion known as Linden situated at 26 Acland Street, St. Kilda, Melbourne. It deals with three key periods in the building’s history: family mansion (1900), boarding house (1972) and art gallery (1988). These three scenes, set in three separate rooms (Drawing Room, Flatette and Gallery) are played simultaneously as the three separate audience groups rotate through the building. Thus, each group witnesses the whole play but in different orders. Finally all characters and audience members come together for a final, surreal scene in the hallway. The play deals with how St. Kilda originated as a wealthy Victorian suburb, then declined to a seedy, downmarket hub for drugs and prostitution until finally becoming regentrified in the late twentieth century.