ONE young man dies and another lives because of it in Kerry Bowden’s latest play Heart Lines.

In the Fremantle Festival play the local playwright explores the concept of a heart being more than tissue.

“What if there is more to a heart than pumping blood around the vital organs?” she asks.

“What if it becomes us: our life force, complete with our inherent traits?”

Noah is 23 and wouldn’t be alive if not for the heart transplant he’d received four years beforehand.

But ever since the operation he’s not been quite who he was before. Poetry, new interests and different perspectives emerge, and he wonders if it’s just the effects of a close brush with death, or something held deeply within the heart.

“He is reflecting on who the heart donor is and wondering what his family was like,” Bowden says.

In Australia where organ donation is opt-in rather than opt-out, donations are a dismal 16 per one million. WA comes in second bottom.

As a result the Heart and Lung Donor Foundation is interested in the play and hopes it generates some signatures.

For Bowden the play is a question of the randomness of life and death, not a public relations exercise, but she’d love to see more people sign on.

The rustic PS Art Space in Pakenham Street is the perfect venue for the play, ably performed by Tristan Gorey, Tyler Lindsay-Smith, Brodie Masini, Jesse McGinn, Blake Richardson and Nick Stevenson.

It’s on October 29–31, 7.30pm. Tix at ticketbooth.comau/heartline

by JENNY D’ANGER