PREVIEW Our own resident production company, National Theatre of Parramatta, will present the world premiere of The Incredible Here and Now, a play adapted from the book of the same name.The book has been written for young adults by award-winning author, Felicity Castagna, who has then adapted the book for the stage. Set in and around Parramatta, the story and characters are immediately identifiable and relatable. Well known Australian author, Libby Gleeson, describes the book:“Michael is going through the hardest year of his life, as he walks the streets of Western Sydney, endures school and tentatively reaches out for his first girlfriend. By the end of this fine novel you’ll feel you really know him, his family and his world.” To introduce the book and to give an idea of what audiences can expect from the stage adaptation, we have included the first 3 short chapters. WEST Some people say ‘West’ like it is something wrong, like ice-cream that fell in a gutter. I think West is like my brother’s music, too much bass so you end up dancing like your body parts don’t fit together and laughing all at the same time.That’s what West is: shiny cars and loud things, people coming, people going – movement.Those who don’t know any better, they come into the neighbourhood and lock their windows and drive on through, never stopping before they get somewhere else. But we know better.We know the boys sag their pants because they look good that way, and the fat greedy- looking guy is yelling from the balcony because his girls haven’t come back from the park yet, and the men smoking hookahs at the café on the corner are only smoking stuff that smells like apples and telling each other lies like men in every other place do. I never thought anything bad could happen here and then it did. The word on Esther is that she had a son, somewhere, at some point. Mum said she saw him once hanging round the garbage tins near the left side of the apartment block. Mum said he was a thin thing, with pale blue sockets for eyes and skin like it had never seen the sun. I haven’t seen him, only heard him once late at night, yelling through her window, saying he wanted some money, again and again. That time she was all quiet-like, not Esther at all, just pleading in a small bird’s voice for him to go away. I never heard her like that before, usually she’s got a tongue as sharp as a knife. Dom doesn’t like her so much because she always puts him in his place – like the time when he spray- painted his hair into a multi-coloured Mohawk and Esther said that people would think his mother had dropped acid and had sex with a peacock. That time, me and Esther, we just sat there laughing at Dom, growing full with a huge-arse temper until he said, ‘Isn’t that what happened to your son? Took too much acid or something and wandered off?’ ‘No,’ Esther said, ‘he’ll be back, he’ll be right. Esther pours herself another glass of sherry with her thin shaky hands and lets it spill like she had lost hope down her dress. The Incredible Here and Now won The Prime Minister’s Literature Award (YA 2014), was the IBBY Honour book for Australia in 2016 and was shortlisted for The NSW Premier’s Literature Awards, The WA Premier’s Book Awards and The Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year Award. The book is published by Giramondo and available online and in book stores. The play will be performed at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta in July, 2017. EVERYWHERE PEOPLE Parramatta is an everywhere-people kind of place. People always coming and going.There’s the Indian kids down the road who think they invented cricket and the Pakistani kids next door to them who are always trying to tell them they’re wrong. Some people, they come from the city and some all the way from Penrith. My family, they’re from somewhere else a long time ago but we’ve been West since the convicts landed in Parramatta Cove. Poppy says that the Raffertys in the street behind us are too loud because they’re part Irish and part Italian and part Lebanese: Poppy say that’s about as loud as people can get. Mum says, when people ask you where you’re from you should say, here, because here is where you’re at.This is my mother, who says that all people from all places are good people except, maybe, the Hare Krishnas across the street who keep her awake on Sunday nights with all that wailing, but I like it because it makes me feel like I’m going to some far off place as I fall into sleep, like I’m West but I’m everywhere all at the same time. ESTHER Our apartment block is full of all kinds of people: like the lady downstairs with the name that sounds too long, who keeps vegetables in big tubs on her balcony and plays sad music on Sunday afternoons, and Omar upstairs who won’t say where he comes from but I know it’s not here because he showed me a picture once, of him in some desert place.There’s George in the apartment behind us. He’s spent his whole life in this same area, never been anywhere – never saw the point. Esther is the best though: Esther with her half-baked chocolate-chip biscuits and her tiny cups of sherry. She lives in the bottom apartment, the one on the side behind the clothes lines and the mouldy mattress that no one admits to dumping there.When she sees me coming home from school, she yells out,‘Hey Michael. Hey!’ from her window until I end up in her living room staring at her drawn-in eyebrows and her fake, old lady pearls. 21