Handicraft is a strange and dark exploration of faulty memory, failed revenge, and broken families set to the pace of hundreds of out-of-time clocks. 

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Phillip returns to the place where he lived out his nightmare as a child – a small, wooden room of the family home – the place where he endured countless hours of control by The Lady of the House. He has come to seek revenge.

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Instead, Phillip finds his father, Franky, stuck in a cyclic suffering of forgotten truths and convenient fictions that were lost and born in the woods outside their home where Franky would escape with his axe.

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Franky claims he doesn't remember who Phillip is or where The Lady of the House has gone, and Phillip refuses to believe him. Thus ensues Phillip's desperate attempt to get the answers he wants and Franky's fearful survival at the hands of a dangerous stranger. Closure is carved in wood.

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Originally written while in residence as Queensland Theatre Company's Associate Writer from 2006 – 2008, Handicraft  is a warped fairytale of the childhoods we know exist but rarely see and families we don't want to recognise. 

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When time hasn't healed wounds, and an eye for an eye is not an option, how can one return to a world where the living are made of memory?