Cassie and the Lights is a touching new play, following three sisters as they go through the care system. The play is based on a true story, informed by interviews with children to accurately represent the emotional and logistical journey. It is a coming-of-age story examining what defines family and dealing with ambiguous grief.
Cassie and her sisters Kit and Tin frame the beginning of the play with an analogy of a trinary star system. They explain that this is when three stars travel together through space, but two of them are much closer together than the third, so they can all balance each other out as they soar through the cosmos.
As the oldest child, Cassie is protective of her siblings, and she battles taking on the responsibility of trying to be their Mum, while they're being fostered by Alice and Mark. Cassie makes a case to be their legal guardian, while her sisters are in a state of confusion as they constantly miss their mother, (believing she has only gone away for a few days) yet welcoming the care they're given from Alice and Mark.
Cassie is rejected from being her siblings' legal guardian, forcing her to accept that she needs to go on to university and achieve her own dreams. She is assured that Tin and Kit will be fine as they are cared for by Alice and Mark. They might not be blood, but they are family.
The play ends with all three sisters gazing up at the trinary stars with a promise that they will always be together, even if Cassie is a little further away from them for now.
This work provides the perfect balance of comedic and moving content with the dialogue and plot giving light and shade to an important and under-represented topic. There is also a playfulness with meta-theatre, as the characters break the fourth wall to get audience members to read out extracts of text, and share their views on Cassie's predicament. Not only is this engaging for actors and audience, but it also drums home how many people are involved with the legalities of the care system, with strangers dictating whether you are or are not worthy to be a guardian. Cassie and the Lights is an impressively accessible play-text for the big topic it tackles, with gentle humour and touching sibling solidarity.