Ellen lives a shiny life in the heart of a shiny city. She hates her office job, the alcohol isn't making her as drunk as it used to, and she seems to be allergic to the water. But there is always the company of strangers in this city - the stranger, the better. So she's doing fine. Except, savage grief has Ellen in its grip and it's getting tighter. And the anonymous guy she's going home with may not be so anonymous.

After a long and successful marriage, Pam and Don are still very much in love. But Pam is ill and has to make a heartbreaking decision that will transform both their lives. She does so in the only way she knows how - quickly, pragmatically, and resolutely. Don behaves in the only way he knows how - struggling to keep up but desperate not to lose touch. And No More Shall We Part follows Pam and Don's halting, humorous and devastating attempt at the impossible - to begin to say goodbye to each other after a lifetime together.

And God said: Thou shalt love thy neighbour. He obviously hadn't reckoned on Ana. Neighbourhood Watch is a glorious new comedy about hope, death and pets. It's a classic odd-couple story: opposites attract, and from each other they gain a new understanding. But as the domestic crises accumulate, Neighbourhood Watch takes on a sense of enormity in the midst of the ordinary that would make Patrick White proud. Katz is a true original and in Neighbourhood Watch her spirit of curiosity turns optimism into an art form.

The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell - 'In the tradition of Australian gothic classics like Wake in Fright... comes a comedic thriller where Edgar Allen-Poe meets Banjo Paterson.'Australian Stage Online;
Gulpilil is a one man show about the life of, and starring, indigenous performer, David Gulpilil. Reg spent three weeks living with David Gulpilil in Central Arnhem Land preparing for the show.;
The Chatroom details a 15-year old girls online experiences and explores the impact of our changing world on the relationships we have and the way we connect with each other.;
Ruby's Last Dollar is the story of a survivor, a woman who would risk everything to ensure a better life for her granddaughter, but who has only one thing left to gamble with - her precious, lucky coin.

In the heartland of rural Victoria, a backyard exorcism is about to commence. Else has always been a little different, even a little difficult, but when her husband seeks support from his local religious community, what he invites into their home will take the very shape of the unspeakable. Dashing cherished assumptions about guilt and free-will, innocence and redemption in a world of Christian religious values, Furious Mattress recasts events torn from tabloid headlines with Reeves signature wit and wisdom to remind us that most fundamentalists are far more familiar than the fanatics paraded before us in cautionary tales.

In 2005, the horror film Wolf Creek depicted the abduction and torture of three backpackers in the Australian outback, and created an immediate industry and media frenzy. Wolf Creek tapped into the myth of the lonely continent, a fear of the country's hostility and its indifference to suffering, traits which have been deeply etched into our national psyche by real life events such as the Milat and Murdoch murders. Sonya Hartnett takes the hard landscape and the rogue men who inhabit these spaces and evokes the surrealistic terror which continues to fascinate outsiders and locals.

Based on a true story, Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is the tale of a Queensland battler as told through his grandson's eyes. In a one man show Tim Stitz conveys Lloyd as the stoic Queensland battler, a man with a passion for bees, who tried his hand at mining, honey production, growing paw paws, and at retirement ended up going bust. This one-man show has emerged from conversations between Tim Stitz and his grandfather and traces Lloyd's romance with bees through family history, inheritance and the ripening of age.

In a letter to his friend Alexei Suvorin, in 1895, Chekhov wrote that he was working on a new play: "A comedy - three females, six males, four acts, a landscape (a view of a lake), much conversation about literature, little action, and five tons of love." The Seagull is Chekhov's extraordinary gathering of a group of bruised and incandescent dreamers who cannot, no matter how they try, get what they want. It is also one of the masterpieces of theatre about theatre; an exploration of how telling stories and coining symbols interacts with life. Benedict Andrews' adaptation brilliantly reawakens the spirit of Chekhov's great play. Set in a world which is at once Russia then and Australia now, this new version is charged with all the good faith and natural poetry of Chekhov's original.

Thursday's Child is Tin, born on a Thursday and like the old nursery rhyme, has far to go. A strange and lonely child who digs, his wanderings take him underneath the earth into the subterranean tunnels that he's pre-destined to roam. Told by his sister Harper Flute, it is a story of an Australian farming family's strength as they battle their way through the great depression of the 1930's. A surreal and epic piece of theatre that explores the themes of memory, fate, family camaraderie and the spirit of determination in a time of great change. Thursday's Child is an engaging and deeply moving story that captures the heart and imagination.

In 1909 Maxim Gorky wrote Vassa Zheleznova, a savage comedy about a Russian family at war over money, entitlement and the march of progress. But Vassa Zheleznova also relates to one of the great Australian themes: how we hauled ourselves out of our working class past and set out on the road to a relaxed and comfortable future.

Three family members, three monologues, one day, and a heartbreaking tragedy of miscommunication.

Sadie and Ed meet Martin and Chloe at a holiday resort and instantly hit it off, despite coming from completely different worlds. When Martin saves Ed's life, everyone knows the debt can never be properly repaid. But Ed is rich and Chloë and Martin have a need so great it seems divine providence when Ed, wanting to show his gratitude, gives the young couple a year to decide on an appropriate gift. Yet when the year is up, surely Chloe and Martin's wish is something no-one could possibly grant? Wrapped in Joanna Murray-Smith's glinting dialogue, The Gift is a witty examination of our modern moral confusions.

It's 21 August 2010, the night of yet another federal election and, of course, yet another election night party at Don's place. Over the decades, as he and his friends watched governments come and go, they have also closely followed the incoming results from each other's lives: the tallies of luck and misfortune, the unexpected swings for and against. And through it all, the lesson that this crowd of superannuated baby boomers never seemed to learn is that politics and strong personalities should never be mixed with alcohol.

'Is a person still isolated if their friends are make-believe?' Fred is a 16-year-old living on a farm without stock or crops in an Australian country town. When Travis, the charismatic head boy at their school, begins to take an interest in him, Fred gets lured into the intricate world of The Web, where nothing, and nobody, is what they seem. A whodunit for the modern age, The Web, is a fascinating exploration of isolation, friendship, and what happens when social experiments go frighteningly wrong.

The Stones is based on a true story of two boys charged with manslaughter after throwing rocks from a freeway overpass and killing a motorist. This internationally renowned play was created in 1996 and has been performed worldwide including: the National Theatre London; New Victory Theatre, New York; De Krakeling, Amsterdam; and a cowshed in Horn-Zaingrub, Austria. Taboo commissioned by the Sydeny Theatre Company deals with date rape, internet dating, and the ripple effects of sexual assault. Burnt, set in the fictitious town of Gilpendry, was born out of the true stories of people from regional Australia struggling with prolonged drought, and in particular how the stresses and strains of continued drought impacts on families and young people.

Tamara and Jasyn are in love. Tamara is fourteen. Jasyn lives with Aunty and his brother Dane is in prison for dealing. Jasyn wants to take Tamara to the formal, but he hasn't got the cash. In a world of absent mothers and missing fathers, Mrs Petchell battles to keep another year of students out of the ranks of the vanished. The Outsiders is on the syllabus again, but instead of Socs and Greasers, this is the world of Speds and skanks  fuelled by Red Bull and powered by iPods. It can be hard to find your own rhythm when everyone is marching to the beat of a different drum.

Every week somewhere in Australia news headlines proclaim yet another tragedy of young lives lost in a car wreck. Communities are shocked, politicians duck for cover and families are torn apart. . . the same story again and again. Set a month after the crash, Engine is the story of 'Grumpop' who lost a grandson and Natasha who lost a brother. Engine is a highly charged theatrical event about family, friends and cars and of fixing what's broken and celebrating life.

Things aren't going well for the Conway sisters. Dad's just married the Geography teacher, oldest sister Bec's been evicted and Evie's suffering serious issues with her new besties. Michaela has twenty-four hours to solve her sisters' problems before she sits the most important exams of her life. What else could go wrong?

Writer, academic and performer Paul Dwyer retraces three journeys made by his father, Dr Allan Dwyer, a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon, who visited Bougainville during the 1960s, healing dozens of crippled children. Family stories become entwined with the larger narrative of Australias colonial enterprise in the years following: the opening of the giant Panguna copper mine, environmental devastation and Bougainvillean resistance, a war that cost the lives of up to 20,000 people. Since 2004, Paul Dwyer has been making his own journeys to Bougainville, conducting research on the post-war reconciliation process and following the impact of those encounters between his father and the Bougainvillean children. This is politics and performance at its most personal

700 years ago, Sappho is the world's first love poet, the tenth muse of the ancient Greeks, and the inspiration for every lovelorn writer and songster since. But as the centuries have passed with the coming and goings of hundreds of libidinous handymen restoring her buttresses, history has caught up with Sappho. Her tale has become a gap in time for new generations to pour their needs and desires, but what is the truth behind her own story? Placed alongside a modern love story of sensuality, sexual awakening and broken-hearts, Sappho... in 9 fragments exposes the timeless undoing of love.

If you don't know who you are and you don't know where you're headed, you might find yourself spiralling in ever-tightening circles until you come to rest in a nondescript part of town in a crummy two-star hotel, where the service is churlish, the lift doesn't work, the toast is burnt and the pot plants set off your allergies. But keep your expectations low, really low, and, who knows? - you might be pleasantly surprised by how everything works out. A hotel with reservations. Award-winning playwright Daniel Keene's play is an eccentric fable about taking up residence and trying to move on.

Gwen is 90. She woke up this morning to discover that purgatory is sitting alone in a new house in a new subdivision on the edge of town, trying to work out if the remote in her hand operates the TV, the air-con or the fanforced oven. But the kids are coming round and Father Ezekiel is on his way to bless the house, so the beginning of the end is looking up... Written specially for Company B, Gwen in Purgatory is Tommy Murphys brilliant existential comedy about an African missionary in the wilderness of Australian suburbia. Gwens brood of ordinary souls is battling along in a changing world and wringing out the last drops of their matriarchs faith. Between them they may just find their way to some sort of forgiveness.

When a great singer lets her voice float out over the anonymous crowd, or form the grooves of thousands of records, or flow through radios into millions of homes across the world, she makes countless unknown connections with people. The singer has her story and the listener hers, and should those stories touch each other, there can be magic.

What do you do when you profoundly disagree with someone you love? Wearing a hijab is a touchstone of religious identity, but it is also imbued with a complex array of historical and contemporary meanings. In Alana Valentines new play, the cultural meaning of the hijab has become a wedge between generations. At the heart of Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah is the relationship between an aunt and her niece. Both devout Muslims, the younger woman wants to put on a headscarf, the older woman tries to dissuade her. For Aunt Sarrinah, the hijab represents a world from which she has escaped; for her niece, Shafana, it is a personal statement of renewed faith. Alana Valentine has written a startling meditation on the clash between individual freedom and community reaction and, as academic Christina Ho acclaims, ' a quietly insightful intervention that portrays what media headlines never can; the multiple meanings of the headscarf for Muslim women'

Somewhere in middle Australia, the townsfolk of a small town are sick and looking for someone to blame. That is, until a man emerges from their midst. He is on a mission, and with skills as a surgeon, physician and pharmacist, he begins to fire up the townsfolk with his promises (for he is a great orator too). Only he can cure the disease, providing the townsfolk follow his direction without deviation. As he sets about his task of healing the town with an evangelical zeal, almost all are convinced. Except, not everyone is happy. The cure also carries strange side-effects. The pub is empty, the brothel is going out of business, the two-up ring is silent, food is bland, the horses don't race, the football remains un-kicked, arguments are not had, sex has become stale. Truth be told, the men have become dull and proud, the women hard and distant. Is it really better to be cured and living like this? A small minority begins to emerge. They don't want to be cured by the Doctor and have a plan to save themselves. But the majority will not be shifted. All must be cured. Blisteringly funny and provoking in equal measures, Quack is a salient reminder that we alone create our own destiny and our own demons.

A remote valley. An unspeakable crime. A prominent architect is commissioned to design a memorial to the victims. On the eve of the presentation of the memorial to the public, a blind woman comes out of the rain and into the architect's studio. She is the mother of one of the victims and she demands to be heard. Over the next hour the two women do battle over what it means to memorialise the dead, what it means to be a mother and what it means to believe. Like A Fishbone is both a psychological thriller and a haunting puzzle about faith, compassion and the danger of telling the truth.

Adapted by Nick Enright and ron blair. Truffaldino couldnt be happier with his change of circumstance balancing two jobs and earning double the wage. But his masters turn out to be separated lovers on the run staying at the same inn. With one disguised as a man, the wily Truffaldino tries to handle the chaos. Hoop-la and hilarity take hold in this comedy of love gone wrong and mistaken identity in romantic Venice.

This collection, introduced by John McCallum, includes three previously unpublished works: Jonah, a Brechtian musical reinvention of Louis Stone's novel of the same name; Top End, a political drama set in Darwin during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and Lost Weekend which takes a class-based look at 'Australianess'. They are published togetherwith his best-known play, The Floating World, the story of a returned serviceman's descent into madness on a cruise ship bound for Japan.

Adapted by Eamon Flack. Polyneices and Eteocles, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes civil war, have both been killed in battle. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles will be honored and Polyneices disgraced. The rebel brothers body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and will lay unburied to become the food of carrion animals. Defying Creons edict Antigone buries her brother and in so doing unleashes a terrible tragedy.

I think it is the best time to bring a little girl in to the world.' On a simple stage - a dreamed-up version of the Australian backyard - five actors tease out the story of a father and his daughter. Blurring character and perspective, their fluid accounts morph seamlessly between observation and intention, postulation and provocation, cajolement and confession. By the story's end, a dream of modern life has become a searing tragedy of leadership and sacrifice. Love Me Tender is formally inventive, rich in beauty and emotional power. Inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis

Silence is about the secrets and spirits that haunt us from within. A family reunited by a death anniversary have to face the possessiveness of history and put the past to rest. A play for three Vietnamese women, Silence deals with the universal themes of war, betrayal, loss and love, and will feature bunraku puppetry.

Set in a small isolated outback town, this moving and gutsy play is a confronting look at the impact of a young man's suicide on the lives of the family and friends that are left behind. The work was developed over two years with the Mosman Park Arts Foundation along with collaboration from health professionals to help address the issue of youth suicide in Australia.

Six young people from around the world, including two UWA students, spend one glorious summer together on a Greek island in 1983. They are beautiful, adventurous, idealistic and believe that the world is theirs for the taking.Fast-forward to 2009:Each in their own way, they feel trapped by their life choices and are baffled by their children's youth culture in the new millennium. Will a reunion on their magical Greek island be able to rekindle their spiritual fire?

Let the Sunshine asks what happens when people of widely different political views are forced to co-exist. Toby, a maker of hard-hitting documentaries, flees Sydney with his wife after a blow up with the press. He arrives at his old childhood haven only to find the simple town has been transformed into a playground for the wealthy and his old friend has become married to a wealthy property developer. Add the couple's two incompatible offspring, a struggling musician and a ruthless corporate lawyer, and the scene is set for a vintage Williamson comedy.

Scarlett is a 36-year-old waitress who lives with her mother, has no boyfriend, and spends too much time watching old romantic movies. In her working hours she re-runs the scenes from the films with her co-worker Gordon, the gay kitchen hand in the restaurant. As Scarlett drifts deeper into her reveries of Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart, she takes her place as the heroine in each of their movies.

Over three years, Australia's new writing theatre, Griffin Theatre Company, presented fourteen unique short plays across its mainstage season. Seen for one night only, The fates, Seasons and The Seven Needs were three play cycles provoked by the classical mythology of man's inescapable destiny, the seasonal patterns and Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs. Now , this eclectic and fascinating collection of ten minute plays by some of the country's most established and emerging playwrights becomes Short Circuit.

In 2002 , a young man rehearses for his first armed robbery on a bookstore in Newcastle. On the other side of the world, Chechen rebels hold seige of the Moscow Theatre, demanding liberation. One is a local, small time theft and the other an international political crisis, but both are born of a similar futility and powerlessness to be heard. Moving back and forth between Moscow and Newcastle, these real events are the basis for this exploration on what drives such acts of terror and the impact they hold on the victims.

Sidney can feel her career slipping down the plughole. No one loves a pop star when she's forty - not if she isn't Madonna or Kylie. So unless she wants to join the ranks of the has-beens on the casino circuit, she better get herself a hit. But what if she regains the whole world and still feels that something's missing? Baby hunger. Returning to the feisty mood of her hit The Female of the Species, Joanna Murray-Smith in Rockabye gives our self-involved, celebrity-obsessed culture a satirical duff-up.

This is the story of three lost souls at the edge of Savage River - now just a dam, a mine and a ghost town in Tasmania's north-west. From a ramshackle hut by the water, Kingsley forages a living with his young son, Tiger. One night, Kingsley brings home a stranger, the beguiling Jude. Seemingly in trouble, disorientated and with a moral compass way out of whack, she unwittingly changes three lives overnight. Jude soon settles into a routine that is far from her own and let history slip by. History does, though, have a habit of catching up with you.

Funny, disturbing and bittersweet, The Call is an enthralling drama about a young man looking to escape a suburban life. Gary stares into the eyes of a chook. After laying twenty thousand eggs and spending an entire life inside a tiny cage, she's facing the chop. Gary has had a confined life too - most of it spent looking for girls, stealing cars and wagging school. Now it's become a succession of dull, dirty and dangerous jobs. But Gary yearns for something that can make sense of life for him - give it meaning. He hears the call. One that roars inside him. A call of the wild, a call to arms, a call to prayer, a call of adventure. . .

Ruben Guthrie is on fire. He's 29, he's the Creative Director of a cutting-edge advertising agency, he's engaged to a Czech supermodel and Sydney is his oyster. He pours himself a drink to celebrate, a drink to work, a drink to sleep and one spectacular night he drinks so much he thinks he can fly. Ruben Guthrie is Brendan Cowell's brutally honest comedy about spiralling high, crashing hard and being taken to AA by your mum.

"Hope is an icicle. If it drops from a height, it can pierce a hole right through you." Londoner Edith Middleton arrives in Sydney in the grip of the Depression and watches her last penny roll down the drain of that great wishing well, Australia. As her life pitches into abject poverty, she bears an illegitimate child on a sweatshop floor, a gifted boy who drags his reluctant mother through the hole in his heart to discover love that is at once fragile and cruel.The Wishing Well is a feisty, powerful and uplifting story of resilience and love, told seductively with a wealth of actor-power, passion, vivacity and warmth.

It is no use, but William gives Isobel ninety minutes anyway. They were once married, but something happened. Something broke deep down in the mechanism of their lives together and, seeing no way to repair it, they threw it away. But perhaps they were too hasty. Perhaps there was something they could have done. Isabel just wants ninety minutes. Soon William will be married again, so ninety is all she has to make her case. Ninety to remember what they had. Ninety to regain what was lost. Just ninety to rediscover love or call it a day, forever.

Jeremy Glass is an untroubled little boy until his seventh birthday, when he suddenly announces that he is really a grown man called Danny, who died some years before. How can his parents indulge his conviction that he must find his real family? And how can his eerie insistence on his true identity not resurrect painful memories for Danny's widow? With songs from Tim Finn adding expressionistic commentary on the action, Matt Cameron's Poor Boy delivers a supernatural story steeped in loss, anguish and redemption.

A holiday. A time for conversation and distraction, a time to wind down and to dream. . .In a moment of relaxation and quiet reflection, two men unwittingly engage. Spontaneous, unaffected and thrillingly real, innocent discussion becomes an exploration of private fantasy, hidden anxiety, personal mythology and the most inexplicable behaviour. What lies behind the most unconscious gesture? How do power struggles play out in the politest of exchanges? Is there hope in the blank spaces between strangers? An extraordinary blend of performance, humour, sound, video installation and baroque song, Holiday is theatre at its most inspirational.

Meet Ed Kennedy - underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he's hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first Ace arrives. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. . .Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission? The Messenger is a darkly humorous, thought provoking and moving story that reminds us how difficult it is to find our place in the world.

Australia, 1996. The winds of change begin to blow like a gale through the nation as a new government has taken the reins. 'From now on people will have to make their own way in the world. People will no longer be rewarded for being weak. The madness is over& The people have spoken. This is what they want, this is what we voted for, and if you don't see it like me, then you are out of step. So get used to it.' Nick's out of step; he's a writer. No writer has ever lived in Liberal Street before. And the residents are making sure he knows it. In this timely satire, John Doyle's infectious humour takes an affable, yet sublimely sharp tilt at an Australia we all recognise.

high-life political comedy from 1912 in which the forces of socialism, feminism and conservatism fight out an election and an engagement to marry

The wheels in the gravel driveway. The door. Him coming home. I was waiting because I hadn't seen him in a long time. I hadn't been alone with him in so long. . . After a decade under siege a city has finally fallen. But ten years of rage have taken their toll. For an officer returning from this epic overseas campaign, it is time to put the horrors of battle behind him, and to take back his place at the family table. For the officer's wife, it is time to take her revenge. . . Tom Holloway's 'epic-in-miniature' is inspired by Aeschylus' Agamemnon and a truly contemporary Australian landscape - with breathtaking results.

One of the seminal films of the 1970s, Alvin Purple depicts Alvin's struggles with his irresistibility to women - from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The 'definitive ocker comedy', Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s. Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.

Every year, a tiny group of unique individuals give up a regular lifestyle to begin an extraordinary undertaking. Banding together, they are recruited to bring relief to the world's trouble spots. Delivering humanitarian or medical aid, they offer hope to those living on the edge of human tolerance . . . well, at least, that's what they signed up for. Damien Millar explores the intentions, adversities and fears of Australians on the front line. Revealing personal stories with a compassionate eye and a gallows humour, he offers a compelling, practical perspective on international aid. The Modern International Dead is 'witness theatre' at its most potent - the insiders' view on global change today, and the world we hope for tomorrow.

Saturn has returned, and a moment of doubt changes everything. The universe conspires against Matt and Zara, and Zara is jettisoned into orbit. Sex on drugs has become sordid, but the allure of the threesome is still tempting. The prospect of having children is no longer odious, but mortgages and responsibility remain objects of contempt. It's time for lock down. But who's playing? Shifting perspectives on identity and Tommy Murphy's trademark comic flair combine to create a lively theatre of insight and ingenuity.

Three Oaks: Inspired by writer Monica Raszewski's discovery of letters and notes from an artist's estate, Three Oaks explores the notion of piecing together a life when a person dies. Using a combination of text, music and physical theatre the play takes a journey through the life of Janek, a Polish artist who leaves his young family. Years later, his daughter Margaret seeks to write his biography and by speaking with the women in his life, attempts to piece together her own heritage. In doing so, she stirs old resentments and painful memories.

ANNIE is on trial for the murder of her babies and is being defended by STEFFIE a black childless lawyer. Conviction depends on Prof. LAWRENCE TAYLOR's testimony.