Theatre

  • Fringe Festival

IBS: Irritable Blood Suckers

A rom-com from your 2012 tumblr dreams. A garlic-induced IBS girly meets a vampire from Geelong.

A man and women's facial side profile, both kissing a bulb of garlic. The woman's face has blood dripping from her lip. Their faces are on front of a red background.
Hands cup a bulb of garlic with blood dripping from it. Black background.
A man in the background biting a womans neck. The woman is in the foreground screaming and has a bulb of garlic in her mouth. There is blood dripping from her lip.
Past Event
A man and women's facial side profile, both kissing a bulb of garlic. The woman's face has blood dripping from her lip. Their faces are on front of a red background.
Hands cup a bulb of garlic with blood dripping from it. Black background.
A man in the background biting a womans neck. The woman is in the foreground screaming and has a bulb of garlic in her mouth. There is blood dripping from her lip.

  • Presented by: Artistic Allsort

  • Written by: Elise Wilson

  • Produced by: Emily Star

Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 has just dropped, MySpace has been edged out by Facebook, teens unironically text YOLO, and garlic is in... almost every meal.

So, most options are off the (dining) table if you’re an endangered vampire with an anaphylactic garlic allergy.

Enter, Izzy, a human, an IBS girly. Izzy doesn’t eat garlic. After a meet-cute fit for a rom-com, she falls in love with a vampire from Geelong (and his freestyle rapping). But will she end up with more than just a love bite?

IBS: Irritable Blood Suckers is a genre mash-up of romance-horror-comedy, combining the absurdity of vampires against the backdrop of university college dorms. It’s the awkward wit of Taika Waititi’s ‘What We Do In the Shadows’ combined with the whacky friendship of ‘Broad City’.

Brought to you by award-winning playwright Elise Wilson, this script was written during the Australian Theatre for Young People and Barking Gecko’s Fresh Ink mentorship program in 2021 and is presented as the debut work for Bridget Sweeney’s Artistic Allsort.

Praise for Elise’s previous work:
“This is a play that couples intelligent writing with dynamic and enthralling staging to envelope the audience in a psychological and physical experience.” - Gutter Culture ★★★★½

“Beautifully written by young playwright Elise Wilson... The directions the storyline takes are wild and full of imagination” - Seesaw Magazine ★★★★★

THE TEAM
Director: Bridget Sweeney
Actors: Eliza Grundy, Dan O’Halloran, Liimei Lim
Designer: Fiona MacDonald

artisticallsort.com