Inspired by the annual Alice Springs Beanie Festival, ‘Head Full Of Love’ is the story of a white woman and an indigenous woman, played by Colette Mann and Roxanne McDonald.

“It’s a play about reconciliation, two women and how they meet, how they have great differences but eventually how they find that they’re really just the same person,” Mann says.

They meet on a bench in Alice Springs and realise that despite their differences in language, surroundings and upbringing they aren’t so different underneath it all. “I play a woman who comes from Sydney and she’s running away,” Mann says. “She’s running away from her life in Sydney and she’s a bit broken mentally and Tilly, the other character, is a bit broken physically and they both have family problems that they’re dealing with. This woman finds herself in the middle of Australia and doesn’t actually know why she’s there or why she went there in the first place and is just trying to find her way through the rest of her life.”

“Tilly is physically ill, she has kidney disease and she’s going through dialysis,” McDonald says. “She’s a sick woman, I mean sick physically, so she’s having to deal with a lot of cultural family things which she tells Colette’s character. There’s lots of talking about family, talking about life and struggles, all those things.”

As the two women crochet their beanies, they develop a relationship based on shared secrets, struggles and successes. “I think the main message is that people sometimes have preconceived ideas about a culture, especially with regards to kidney disease and aboriginal people. There are these misconceptions about how it must be because they’re all alcoholics and that’s why they get this disease when in actual fact it’s not, it’s due to a lot of other things,” McDonald says.

They’ve previously opened the show in Darwin for the Darwin Festival and it was well received by the community. “A lot of the community people came out and there was excitement around the production, lots of beanie making and people coming in from around Darwin. I’m really enjoying this second run of the play, we’ve done the piece before so I feel like we’re finding our characters more and it’s sitting in our bodies better. I’m feeling more confident with it,” says McDonald.

Written by Alana Valentine, the play shows that people need to look beneath the surface, not judge a book by its cover and that we’re all the same underneath no matter what colour our skin is. “It’s a beautifully written play by Alana. It’s something different ... it’s actually got a message,” Mann says.

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn something and hopefully people will recognise something in the characters. Then also see that even though we have differences culturally, we are very similar as human beings and as women. I think everyone will relate to a lot of things in the production,” McDonald says.

‘Head Full Of Love’ runs July 7 to August 11 at the Cremorne Theatre QPAC.