A HOUSE is the main character in an original new play commissioned as part of Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre’s “Q The Locals” program.

Creator Kate Walder and musician John Shortis have joined forces to pay tribute to 21 Forster Street, Bungendore, a heritage home lovingly cared for by Walder’s father Chris, who died in 2017.

Shortis was even married there and he, in turn, used to visit printmaker Theo Tremblay when he lived in the house, but its history goes back to the 19th century, so there are many a tale to be told onstage.

Billed as “a journey through time through the walls and histories of the house”, it’s been inspired by stories Kate’s father shared with her in his final days.

Artistic director of The Q, Jordan Best says: “Kate’s late father’s house not only has historical significance within the community, but by drawing on stories from its 150-year history the work will shine a light on the regional Australian home.”

Chris Walder was one of a long line of residents at 21 Forster Street, as I find when I catch up with Walder to talk about her theatre company, Steps And Holes and the peripatetic lifestyle that sees her dash back-and-forth between Sydney and Bungendore, where her partner lives.

Titled simply, “21 Forster St”, the play is her company’s first major work and a world premiere, too.

But she’s no theatrical ingenue. A graduate in musical theatre from the WA Academy of Performing Arts before going to Paris to study with master clown Ecole Philippe Gaulier, she has since amassed a swag of credits, performing at the Ricca Festival Japan and the Edinburgh Fringe, while also working professional shows in Sydney and at the Australian Theatre for Young People in Sydney.

Kate will perform in the play, but she’s also engaged the clown Damien Warren-Smith and Poppy Lynch, daughter of the late actress Penny Cook.

Partly inspired by a swimming pool game she used to play with her dad as a girl, the play looks at the hidden lives in the house’s history, giving weight to the cliché, “if these walls could speak”.

Chris had renovated the old house, sourced 1880s stained glass windows from an old pub in The Rocks, and paid loving attention to details he felt captured the integrity of the house.

After he died, 21 Forster Street was put up for sale, and as she grieved, Kate thought about the many things that must have happened between there since farmer Crawley built the house in the 1860s.

Buoyed by her dad’s stories and books about old Bungendore, she dug into the history of the house.

“It was a little overwhelming, but I’ve put it together with my father as a kind of narrator,” Kate says. 

There’s a section about the Crawleys, who built the house, for which she’s adopted a vaudevillian way of telling the tale. 

Then there’s the part about the family of Dr Eric Dark, related to Australian author Eleanor Dark, of “The Timeless Land” fame. The Darks lived there briefly in 1918, so the play goes into the silent-movie style of the time. 

Finally, there is the Edmonds family, who lived there for a full 70 years and whose descendants are all around Bungendore and Queanbeyan. 

“That’s going to be a bit like a Broadway musical that moves into the era of TV,” she says, describing it as “a visual and physical experience,” one she needed to flesh out with music.

That’s where Bungendore local, Shortis, came into the picture.

“I asked him to do a musical montage and that man can really generate tunes,” Kate says. 

Shortis tells me he was asked to create musical scores that reached across the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and into the era of rock ’n’ noll. And he did. 

There’s more history-in-the-making at number 21 Forster Street. Another famous novelist, Inga Simpson, is the daughter of the new owner and Kate talked her into writing some of the text – “that’s one of the best things in the whole show,” she says. 

“21 Forster St”, The Q, Queanbeyan, May 26-June 4. Book at theq.net.au or 6285 6290.