Three women,
Two guns,
One room,
No way out ...

Mo & Jess Kill Susie is a tense, claustrophobic hostage drama.

Two armed Maori women, one calm and resolute, the other restless and volatile, wait with their bound, gagged and unconcious captive, in the washroom of an empty building.

The hostage, a Pakeha policewoman, is the trump card in a tense face-off down on the waterfront, between Maori protestors and police. The women are waiting for a phone call ... instructions on how to deal with their victim.

The night tightens around them, claustrophobia closes in, time runs out, the call doesn't come ...

Mo & Jess Kill Susie won the Peter Harcourt Memorial Award for Best New Short Play for writer Gary Henderson, and Best Female Newcomer for actress Nicola Kawana at the 1996 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in Wellington NZ.

(Maori = the indigenous people of New Zealand;  Pakeha = the Maori word for white New Zealanders)


Published in Three Plays with An Unseasonable Fall of Snow and Skin Tight.