A new mother awaits treatment for breast cancer. A quantum of light travels from the Big Bang to the present. A beetle searches for the sky. This is the world of Mother, Beetle, Sky: an intimate music-drama with songs about time, love and light.

Book, music and lyrics by Tracy Bourne, Photon’s Arrow was developed in 2023-24 through the Early Phase program at The Street Theatre. The work is still in development and may be performed in 2026.

INSPIRATION FOR THE WORK

In 2019, I was diagnosed with early stages breast cancer. The treatment involved surgery and a 4 week course of radiation. I found the world of the hospital, especially the radiation ward, a weird ‘other’ place: It was the simple practicality of the furniture, the incredible cleanliness, the costumes that we patients would wear. The radiation technology also blew me away. These beautifully designed and sophisticated machines were capable of breaking my cells apart and breaking their DNA. 

During my treatment, I learned that some radiation technology uses photons to create the radioactive electrons that enter the cancer cells, and that got me thinking about where these photons have come from. In fact, photons are some of the earliest particles in the universe. They were there at the big bang, the birth of all life. So I started to think, what if a photon that had travelled from the big bang to the present had something to say to the human experience of life and death. 

I am also a mother. My body has grown and fed other humans, which is a miraculous thing. Even more miraculous to me is the instinctive, all-consuming force of love that I felt for my children the moment they were born, and still feel for each of them. Where did this fierce love come from? The emergence of life through my body has changed everything about my life’s direction and purpose. 

So I wondered what it would be like if I brought these two stories together about new life, illness, technology and the wonder of the universe.