In Conversation With Playwright Betty Sweetlove

Image: Betty Sweetlove photographed by Karina White.

Geoffrey Williams spent some time with Mparntwe (Alice Springs)-based playwright Betty Sweetlove, whose first play The Nestmakers will enjoy its world premiere season at Darwin’s Brown’s Mart Theatre in March.

“Who decides who survives the end of the world?”, the immediately engaging promotional tagline read. “A luxurious bunker complex, sometime in the near future. A fragmented group of colleagues work together to sell a prepper paradise in the middle of the desert. As business unravels and their carefully tailored existence falls apart, they each reveal their personal strategies for survival. The Nestmakers imagines that a billionaire-backed start-up called ‘The Nest’ has set up on the outskirts of a small desert town. An elite resort of luxury survival bunkers, The Nest is preparing for their big launch, but not if certain locals can help it.”

Having instantly imagined a flashy and expensive new limited series on Netflix, directed (more than likely) by Roland Emmerich, and probably starring Ben Affleck, my curiosity was piqued. I also have what some might consider an over-zealous fascination with tales set in epic, dystopian wastelands. You know, once great and now desolate cities, zombie plagues, and feisty young heroines and heroes who are, more often than not, surrounded (yes, necessarily) by needy, less capable dependents who you just wish would hurry up and learn to think for themselves so that said heroines and heroes might have a million more opportunities to survive the impending Armageddon.

Described as “… a time capsule of climate anxieties, a resting place for your doom and gloom”, The Nestmakers is “… a play about culpability and climate, bunkers and billionaires, and the refusal to give in to your prepper side.” Clearly, I was hooked … and equally as clearly (quite apart from not wanting to write an article about how important excellent promotional copy is), I was very keen to meet the writer responsible for firing up my imagination so completely.

Currently exploring the grand themes of climate disaster, collective action, and utopia and dystopia, Betty Sweetlove is an ambitious young writer who aims to create “expansive, joyful and high-emotion collective theatrical experiences”. Having grown up in London and the south-east of England, Ms Sweetlove has lived in Mparntwe since 2015.

Geoffrey: What brought you to Australia, and Mparntwe in particular? That’s quite the move! Was Mparntwe your first destination in Australia?

Betty: Like so many people, I moved to Central Australia accidentally! I was backpacking after I graduated and fell in love with it here – the huge landscape, the sense of community, the remoteness. It was such a contrast coming from London. I was fortunate enough to be sponsored for my visa quite quickly and now it’s been 10 years since I left to go travelling and didn’t come home. My family have been incredibly supportive, and I go back to the UK as much as I can.

Your love of theatre sits alongside your interest in history and heritage, based on your understanding of how storytelling and history writing are not only great responsibilities, but also powerful tools. Can you share details about your heritage with us?

I grew up with my mum in the UK, first living in London and then near Southampton, closer to where some of our family live. Growing up, mum would often take me to pantomimes, shows and festivals, so that’s how I developed a love of theatre and performance when I was quite young. My dad is also a writer and a journalist, so there were definitely a few creative influences throughout my childhood.

What attracted to you to the themes of apocalypses, geographic isolation, and human-induced climate change? How does living in Mparntwe and the Central Desert region inform or influence your understanding and appreciation of these subjects?

Living in the Northern Territory (NT) has had a huge impact on my understanding of land, place, and climate. It’s such an enormously important aspect of First Nations culture and people’s lives here. There are so many people – artists and community members – involved in campaigns to stop fracking in the NT, protect water, or manage the spread of buffel grass, for example. I am incredibly grateful to be living on Arrernte Country – it has been a profoundly important place in my life. It’s also hard to live here and not become more aware of the climate.

Image: Betty is “… incredibly grateful to be living on Arrernte Country – it has been a profoundly important place in my life.”

I first started thinking about bunkers and preppers because I heard people talking about what they might do to manage in the climate crisis. I’d be at a dinner party, and someone would say they were buying a block in Tasmania or a bus to stay mobile because it would get too hot here. People’s fears are completely valid – there are devastating climate-related events already happening.

I started to research the tech billionaires buying land in Aotearoa/New Zealand for their bunkers and got very interested in prepping culture. I became fascinated by these inequalities and contradictions, but also how prepping can function as a really meaningful opportunity for people to build skills, spend time in nature, and grapple with the realities of the climate.

In an age of non-stop streaming and screen time, you’re interested in theatre that generates spaces of refuge from the demands of screens, hoping to make work that brings people together in unexpected moments of care, collaboration, and connection. Can you tell us about how you believe the saturation of screen time and streaming time impacts us negatively? 

Like a lot of people, I am constantly trying to work around screen habits that are seriously unhelpful to the writing process. I’ve never really shared much online, so a lot of the time I’m just consuming non-stop content, in this quite passive way. I have to make a lot of bargains with myself and hide my phone away because I also really love the internet and always have done.

I love that theatre is so old and a bit analogue. It’s such a funny format of people getting together in the dark to all pretend in the same story. I’ve worked with amazing multimedia and projection artists, and while it’s not that I think screens onstage are bad, I just enjoy that we don’t always need them. I never stop being obsessed with that collective feeling of being in the audience or backstage with everyone. When it’s good, it is the best feeling ever.

You are interested in creating theatre that energises people’s capacity for dreaming ‘radical dreams’. Can you tell us more about your concept of radical dreams?

I came to Australia after graduating from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, which was another really transformative time. It was a very politically charged environment, although I probably spent more time organising improv classes than anything. It definitely gave me a grassroots and DIY approach to creativity and a firm belief that theatre and art is for everyone. It also equipped me with an understanding that art is necessary to articulate beyond the present moment, to dream up new realities.

You first started developing your writing through Brown’s Mart ‘Fresh Ink’ youth program and gained a lot from their residencies and their flagship new work development program ‘BUILD UP’. What impact did these opportunities have on your work?

Brown’s Mart supported me to become a baby playwright through Fresh Ink and has been a huge part of my life as an NT artist ever since. Fresh Ink is a total lifeline for young NT writers. Now that I work with high school students, I appreciate even more the way it forges connections with mentors and the broader industry. The Brown’s Mart residency model is also unlike anything I’ve ever experienced – it’s so rich. It was where I had some big conversations as a younger artist about dedicating myself to my writing.

One of the best things that ever happened to me was going on a regional youth writing residency called ‘The Writing Place’ in 2019, organised by the totally inimitable Alysha Herrmann. Luckily, I scraped through into the youth bracket at 25, and it was honestly life changing. I’m still so impressed that project existed.

How did the experience of the intensive script development process at Red Hot Arts in Central Australia, and working with Dramaturgs in particular influence your work?

In 2021, dramaturg and writer Ciella Williams directed a beautiful creative development process for The Nestmakers with five local actors. Ciella’s dramaturgy was foundational in helping me work out what I was actually trying to do. Bek Law then directed a second development through the Project Seed program at Red Hot Arts. Bek breathed so much comedy, nuance, and movement into the script. I picked up so much from witnessing their practice as one of the most rigorous directors and collaborators out there. Writer Declan Furber Gillick also dramaturged the script with a lens of class analysis, which helped me so much to unlock the deeper power struggles in the story.

Are you a ‘prepper’ or a ‘fatalist’? Or a combination of both?

At this point in my life, I’m not really a prepper or a fatalist. That might be because I’ve finished the process of writing The Nestmakers and am filled with gratitude for having my first play on at Brown’s Mart. I have a lot of respect for people prepping, living off-grid, and rejecting conventional conveniences to live a more sustainable life – compared to likes of Peter Thiel [co-founder of PayPal] and Elon Musk, whose apocalypse fantasies involve elite survival schemes on stolen land, which is very much less exciting to me.

What are your hopes for the season of The Nestmakers at Brown’s Mart?

I hope the Brown’s Mart season takes Elon down! More realistically, I hope people have a great time seeing the show, find it funny and eye-opening. It’s a complete joy for the show to be in the Education Program for 2025 and I want as many young people in Darwin to see it as they can. I’d love it if the audience leaves a little bit more in touch with their own prepper side, and how that might connect them to their community instead of leaving us all isolated in bunkers.

Director, Gail Evans, was attracted to the “timely and topical elements” of The Nestmakers. “There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty about the planet's future currently floating around the Zeitgeist,” Ms Evans explained, “and Betty's play delves into a number of those fears. I was also attracted to the satirical/comedic elements that make the play entertaining as well as thought-provoking. I'm a firm believer that comedy is a most effective tool to convey serious messages in a light-hearted way. Betty's writing is clever, insightful, and funny, she has created a dystopian world that is believable and credible, whilst still leaving us with a seed of hope for the future.”

Image: The Nestmakers promotional image (supplied).

The Nestmakers by Betty Sweetlove. A Brown’s Mart Production. 4–15 March 2025 at Brown’s Mart Theatre,12 Smith Street, Darwin. You can book tickets here: https://bma1.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/141570