Rebecca Meston
In development with Vitalstatistix and Adelaide Festival Centre’s InSpace program
“It’s definitely a challenge to do the flying and take care of even one child and do all the other things you have to do. But I learned that you can do it.” Lisa Nowak, Ladies Home Journal.
“I know in my heart she wanted me dead.” Colleen Shipman, Daily Mail UK.
In 2007, NASA astronaut and devoted mother and wife Lisa Nowak got into her car and drove for 14 hours from Houston to Orlando, to confront her lover’s much younger lover, Colleen Shipman, in a parking lot at Orlando International Airport. Disguised in a dark wig, glasses and trench coat, she held in her car a knife, mallet, BB gun, duct tape, rope, photos of women in bondage – and she allegedly wore an adult nappy so that she didn’t have to stop.
Using this true crime as a point of departure, Drive is an exploration of lost, deviant women set against long stretches of road. Just how close may we all teeter between Lisa Nowak’s before and after shots? How does a woman at the top of her game and gripping the highest of stakes, suddenly snap and fall so far from grace? When she left, what was she hoping to find?
This new theatrical work re-imagines Lisa’s story and her 14-hour drive, putting the spotlight on the complexities and nuances of a particular kind of mid-life female experience that lurks in the spaces of career, motherhood and suburban spousal life.
Image credit: Sarah Walker