Dealing with heartbreak, break-free birds and life continuing, Canberra Youth Theatre (CYT) presents Rosieville at Canberra Theatre Centre from 29 September to 8 October.

Commissioned by CYT and written by Mary Rachel Brown, the play looks inside a Belconnen cul-de-sac where the neighbours are waiting for a homing pigeon to return to its coop. The free-flying bird that may never come home exposes how everyone is waiting for something.

“Everyone has an unfulfilled expectation … Although most people hide it well, everyone usually has something they want that they don’t quite have yet,” says Ms Brown.

The play focuses on Rose, a teen who encounters her first heartbreak and the challenges and family issues that come along with it. Ms Brown wanted to focus on the ways we keep going during times of difficulty, saying heartbreak is an experience that is both unique and universal.

“The job of theatre is to give voice to the things that we find hard to talk about. In general, when people feel a bit lost or heartbroken a lot of the time they try and hide it.”

If you want to know yourself a bit better, Ms Brown says there is nothing better than heartbreak to aid in the introduction. However, the experience is always a bit easier with a friend of a different species.

“There’s something about the relationship with an animal that’s just so simple and easy that it’s a really beautiful thing,” she says.

In her dreams, Rose is helped by a feathered friend – the pigeon is a representation of her subconscious. Initially disappointed, Rose expected her totem animal would be a bit fancier. The persistent and clumsy bird strives to guide Rose; knowing both the ground and the sky, it sees everything from a different viewpoint.

“The pigeon presents Rose’s inner world and what she’s choosing to hide from other people,” Ms Brown says.

Originally choosing the homing pigeon as a metaphor to keep going when you’re feeling lost, she soon found herself becoming a fan of the once noble birds. Through her research, she learned the way they were trained to help in war efforts and that they can remember faces and other facts she has hidden in the work.

“They’re quite sophisticated animals, there’s something about there being magic in the common that really attracted me to them.”

Moving to Canberra when she was five, Ms Brown has included Canberra specifics for audiences, such as the Birdman Rally that used to be held when she was growing up.

“It was pretty funny,” she smiles. “It was just people getting dressed up in weird sh#t and seriously attempting in most cases to fly across Lake Burley Griffin but then just dropping into the water from a height.”

Attending CYT in her youth, Ms Brown wishes she could go back and tell her 15-year-old self that she would end up being a writer and writing a piece specifically for the organisation.

In Rosieville, the younger characters have things to teach the older ones. According to Ms Brown, there’s a presumption that young people aren’t empowered, and theatre is a place to break this stereotype.

“In terms of their emotional intelligence, we can underestimate the power of that quite often. I know a lot of young people that are really whip-smart, have good funny bones and are really caring, sensitive people that can sometimes have more emotional intelligence than older people.”

The short theatre piece packs a punch. Ms Brown says it covers a lot of story and content, delving into people and our relationships. She is aiming to show the audience that everyone is a work in progress.

“I want people to feel a bit less alone in that respect, and more acutely aware of that underneath every facade of the person, there’s often an internal conflict going on,” she says.

See Rosieville at Canberra Theatre Centre from 29 September to 8 October; canberrayouththeatre.com.au

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