Baggage Productions

Bridgette Burton and Christina Costigan met in 1999 at the National Performance Conference, a biannual event organised by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) bringing together people from all aspects of the arts and entertainment industry for a weekend of workshops, discussion and sharing of experiences and ideas. Passionate about their art, but frustrated at the lack of roles for women, this inspiring weekend prompted Bridgette and Christina to form Baggage Productions and start creating their own work, the kind of energetic, thoughtful theatre they like to see themselves.

In 2000, they wrote and performed in Femme - an entertaining, roller-coaster ride of a show, produced on a zero budget and presented upstairs at Bar Open for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. The show enjoyed multiple incarnations with invitations to perform for the National Youth Conference of Diabetes Australia, as a fundraiser for the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria, and at the Banyule Festival in early 2001 as a guest of Heidelberg Theatre Company.

More sketch comedy followed, with Breeding Contempt (and Other Mating Games) for the 2001 Melbourne Fringe Festival, reworked as Breeding Contempt Redux for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2002. The critically acclaimed Undomesticated played at Trades Hall for the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2003 and received a Fringe Festival nomination for Best Comedy and a glowing review from the Age: “The show is performed slickly and is sharply directed, but its best feature is the writing, which, with its wit and perception, is strongly character-driven and does not simply chase laughs.” Baggage followed this with their first foray into television, producing a pilot of sketch comedy, also called Undomesticated, in 2004.

In 2005, Baggage presented Acts of Loneliness at the Store Room, comprising two one-act plays, Not Forgotten by Bridgette Burton and One on One by Christina Costigan. Directed by VCA graduate Kelly Somes, the two plays contrasted and complemented each other with themes of memory, loneliness and grief. The show was well-received by critics and audiences alike, and praised for “the superb control of theatrical language” and “sophisticated eloquence (of) the writing” (John Bailey, Beat).

Bridgette’s first full-length play, Killing Jeremy, received the RE Ross Trust Award in 2005, leading to a season at the Carlton Courthouse in 2006, co-produced by Hoy Polloy and directed by Wayne Pearn. The play, described by the Age’s Cameron Woodhead as “an elegant and dramatically assured two-hander”, was shortlisted for the Griffin Award.

Baggage took a break for two years, while Bridgette and Christina dabbled separately in short plays (both winning selection at the Short & Sweet festivals in Sydney and Melbourne), baby-making and travel. In 2009, Baggage welcomed Tiffany Davis to the core team and produced the bewitching short play season Beaten Hearts, which played a sold-out season at the Dog Theatre, Footscray. Shortly thereafter, Christina headed to Los Angeles where she produced a U.S. version of Beaten Hearts in 2010, which attracted an overwhelmingly positive response from audiences, and garnered a rave review.

Bridgette's second full-length play, Rhonda is in Therapy, was also a recipient of the RE Ross Trust Award, and a rehearsed reading of the play was presented to a full house at 45 Downstairs as part of the Melbourne International Writers’ Festival in 2010. A fully-fledged production is planned for 2012.