Lally Katz is on a journey. Shes left Australia behind and shes in the country of her childhood, trying to find a way back to when things were innocent. Her relationships are chaotic, her professional life is a shambles and contemporary America seems riddled with charlatans and shysters. But along the way moments of wisdom bubble up, as if from some lost ancient city beneath the waves off Florida. . .The fabulous Lally Katz once again mines her life  both real and imaginative  for an epic story lined with romantic dilemmas and unforgettable encounters. A grand adventure through cynical times, but infused with Lallys unwavering optimism.

Wild, unpredictable, and deeply vulnerable, Barbara and her sister René are singing for their lives. Barbaras been trying to make it in Sydney, but when their mothers health deteriorates, the sisters embark on a pilgrimage back home to country. Full of painful, unfinished business for Barbara, their return sends her into a downward spiral. Can Barbara find a way to resolve the past in time to preserve love in the only family she has known? Through music that ranges from punk-inspired explosions of rage, to tender rock and soul ballads full of yearning, Barbara and the Camp Dogs is a gob-spit of fun, frenzy and family that finds beauty in honesty and hope in confronting the past.

Monologues are a crucial element of theatre, for actors and students alike. From high school study to professional auditions and performances, the monologue exposes the heart of a play and the capacities of the performer. The monologue should be relevant to the performer, and a revelation to the audience. This new collection brings together 30 monologues from contemporary Australian plays. These voicesfrom ages 14 to 84, from the 1880s to the near futureshowcase the best of our national writing for the stage.

Monologues are a crucial element of theatre, for actors and students alike. From high school study to professional auditions and performances, the monologue exposes the heart of a play and the capacities of the performer. The monologue should be relevant to the performer, and a revelation to the audience. This new collection brings together 30 monologues from contemporary Australian plays. These voicesfrom ages 14 to 84, from the 1880s to the near futureshowcase the best of our national writing for the stage.

Grace Under Pressure is a verbatim theatre project about the workplace and training cultures that are making young health professionals sick  and which put patient lives at risk. Acclaimed verbatim theatre makers David Williams and Paul Dwyer, in collaboration with the Sydney Arts and Health Collective, have developed Grace Under Pressure from interviews with doctors and nurses at various stages of their careers. Grace Under Pressure will open a critical space for conversation about these often taboo issues, and will be an important public intervention into medical culture, as well as a compelling, confronting, hopeful and deeply moving work of theatre.

Since the death of her charismatic but abusive husband, Helene Alving has been treading water in a sea of empty days. What keeps her going is a deeply held belief that salvation can only lie in telling her son Osvald the truth about his father. But when Osvald returns after living as an artist in France, he has his own truth to reveal: he is already living the consequences of his fathers life. . .Ghosts outraged critics and thrilled audiences when it first premiered in 1882. Over a century later, Henrik Ibsens controversial masterpiece, adapted specially for Belvoir by Eamon Flack, remains just as riveting and radical.

The Incredible Here and Now is a play about cars and boys and having to grow up too soon. Charcoal chicken, a white Pontiac Trans Am, the Council pool, Michael is living in the shadow of his older brother Dom. The biggest guy in the school. Best car in the West. The guy who just can't help but grab everyone's attention. The guy with the girlfriend with the huge-arse hair. When he is gone Michael roams the streets, navigating life, friendship, love and family. The Incredible Here and Now is a poignant rollercoaster ride celebrating life, first love, family and new beginnings, traversing the streets of Western Sydney. Adapted for the stage by international award-winning local author and playwright Felicity Castagna.

At Sunset Strip the only people left are those who couldn't leave. Arriving home after a bout of chemotherapy to this once-thriving summer hot spot, Caroline finds the lake completely dried up, the holiday-makers long gone. Yet her younger sister, the ever-optimistic Phoebe, remains doggedly hopeful. Between a stint in rehab, caring for her demented dad (who has a penchant for training goldfish) and losing her kids temporarily to DOCS, Phoebe has managed to find love in Teddy, a local fallen fella with a big heart. And now that Caroline is back, Phoebe is determined to make life fabulous. In Sunset Strip, Suzie Miller, author of Caress/Ache and Transparency, examines love, family dysfunction and making the best of shitty situations and prosthetic breasts. Sunset Strip finds the humour in tragedy and creates an unlikely path for humanity to triumph.

Who here can tell what law we owe the dead? Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, is a child of war. Thousands of years ago she asked a question: What do we do with the body of the enemy, when this enemy is our brother? Damien Ryan's new adaptation of Sophocles' classic takes the conflicts of ancient Thebes and wrenches them passionately into the present. This story of war and its aftermath is a powerful yet vulnerable allegory about one of history's most famous families.

The court case captivated a nation. A mother accused of murdering her child, her claim - that the baby was taken by a dingo - denied and discredited by zealous police and a flawed legal system. The media circus, the rumours, the nation's prejudices laid bare. And in the eye of the storm: Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. Over three decades, from baby Azaria's death to the final coroner's report, the public's fascination with Lindy seldom waned. The National Library holds a collection of more than 20,000 letters to Lindy. From sympathy to abuse, from marriage proposals to death threats, the correspondence traverses the gamut of responses to Lindy's story. Letters to Lindy draws on this correspondence and interviews with Lindy herself. It is an enthralling, revealing, and long overdue dialogue between Lindy and the nation; a portrait of the wisdom and resilience of a grieving mother.

A theatrical collection of stories and songs from Richard Frankland's extraordinary life as a child abattoir-worker, a young soldier, a fisherman and a field officer for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. These are Richard's tales, given universal voice on the stage. Richard Frankland ( Conversations with the Dead) is a Gunditjmara man, an author, and a singer/songwriter. Working on the front line of Indigenous issues for the past twenty-five years, his aim has been to facilitate the voice of Indigenous Australians and bridge the gap between black and white. Walking into the Bigness is an intimate, emotional and humorous work that will take you through the undulating terrain of a life, to step into the unknown.

'You read about those kids who know they don't belong. They are in some kind of prison until they turn 18, stuck in the backseat of the car between two kids who do belong.' What would happen if someone you knew disappeared? How would you react? How would your school react? An assembly called, a footy game postponed, a class interrupted. But who is Michael Swordfish? And who knows where he's gone? For two years award-winning playwright Lachlan Philpott collaborated with students from Newington College, Sydney, to bring their voices and worlds to life. Michael Swordfish is the exciting product of this collaboration: a play that traverses the tumultuous landscape of the teenage experience with a sober truth and darkly comic voice.

David Williams - acclaimed documentary theatre maker, writer and football fanatic - is the 'Smurf'. For the uninitiated, 'Smurf' is the nickname given to a Sydney Football Club fan. During the 2013-14 A League football season, Williams, a long-suffering Sydney FC fan, frequented Western Sydney Wanderers' games on their home turf in Parramatta. Kitted out in his Sydney FC sky-blue jersey, Williams-the-Smurf stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the sea of red and black. His presence caused bewilderment and banter, but none of the hooliganism that's come to be associated with the game - he didn't need to fear for his life. Developed during Williams' 2015 residency, Smurf in Wanderland is one man's insightful and hilarious examination of football, tribalism, belonging and identity. It's also a passionate defence of the fan - what it means to be a fan, the demonisation of fans and the artificial wedge that has been created between Sydney and its western suburbs.

Melbourne Talam tells the story of three Indian characters on three different types of visas-spouse, student and work-as they search for belonging in a foreign city. A train accident disrupts each character's 'talam'-a Tamil term used in music, it is the base on which the notes of musical compositions and poetry rest-redirecting the lives of all three. The characters face adversity in many forms, both external and internal, and the conflict between their aspirations and the reality of the migrant experience drives the play's drama. Inspired by real-life events, Melbourne Talam puts Melbourne's contemporary social issues at centre stage.

Two teenagers fleeing unthinkable dangers find solace in each other amidst the unrelentingly damaging confines of an asylum seeker processing centre. Their new 'home' offers a kind of safety, but very little in the way of humanity, and less kindness. Ninna Tersman's writing is poetic, spare, and deeply human. She plays with theatrical form in many ways. The two actors in Parasites play the teenagers and a number of adults who impact their lives. This is the tender story of young people in a desperate situation, yearning for hope and home.

Kane is one of the worlds biggest movie stars. His body double has been there from the start, sharing more than just looks with his famous counterpart. The body double and Kane are to work on Lake Disappointmentan independent arts film that might see them win prestigious awards and fame.

Theo rages against the age of unearned celebrity. She doesn't want to make a mark on the world or do anything but live a decent and dignified life. If only her family would cooperate! Her father desperately chases fame, her boyfriend embraces notoriety as an internet troll and her mother is concerned with what the church thinks, even though she's only in it for the cake stalls. And then there's the baby, of course. She's a problem. Life has never been further from ordinary. . .A battle across generations, Out of the Ordinary captures the dilemma of navigating the modern world, where an obsession with what we leave behind threatens to swallow our present.

In a dirt-dry town in rural Australia, a shot shatters the still night. A mother and her daughters have just welcomed home the man of the house - with a crack in the shins and a bullet in the neck. The only issue now is disposing of the body. Triggered into thrilling motion by an act of revenge, The Bleeding Tree is rude, rhythmical and irreverently funny. Imagine a murder ballad blown up for the stage, set against a deceptively deadly Aussie backdrop, with three fierce females fighting back.

Three plays that make a powerful statement on Australias relationship with the environment in the shadow of global warming.

A premiere Australian play based on actual events, showing just how startling real-life can be. Mary-Ellen Field is a successful Australian business consultant in London-until she's accused of betraying the secrets of her supermodel client to the press. Her life comes crashing down: her job, her health and her standing in society collapse. When it emerges that her client's phone had been hacked by reporters, Mary Ellen sets out to defiantly restore her reputation. But along the way, her ideas of redemption change-she's been interviewed by a journalist on the other side of the world, and his story puts everything into a new perspective.

Here comes Edith Campbell Berry, fresh from International acclaim at the League of Nations, handsome British diplomatic husband in tow. Look out 1950's Canberra, she's on her way to the top. Or is she? The League was after all a failure, and hubby dear is a secret cross dresser and her long lost brother is a Communist agitator watched by a fledgling ASIO. Maybe those dreams of renewed diplomatic honour might take longer than she thinks to materialize. A lot longer. And so to be 'acceptable' she consults the Book of Crossroads, bungles her inner life, remarries badly, and compromises her career options. An epic story of national significance, Cold Light surveys the transformation of Australia from the post-WWII Menzies era to the mid-1970's Whitlam government and asks timely questions about Australia's relationship to women of vision and people of difference

Sandy was the only Australian War Horse to return home from World War I. This is his poignant and fragmented war story. Through Sandy we experience the lives of three men who fought in the war. Major General Sir William Throsby Bridges is mortally wounded at Gallipoli, and Sandy is his charger. A veterinary officer is caught with Sandy behind the lines on the Western Front in a gas shell barrage. A 'permanently unfit' soldier becomes a groom and brings Sandy home. Each is affected by their symbiotic relationship with the horse. This unique, poetic piece of theatre captures the brutality of war and the heroism of the soldiers and horses who served. Sandy is the horse full of wattle who drank the waters of the Murray in bucketloads, and who danced with bogong moths. He is our connection to all those left behind.

A passionate and unflinching collection of three award-winning plays by and about women, featuring an introduction by Alison Croggon. In Muff by Van Badham, the wounds of an horrific event are re-opened as Eve tries to navigate a friendship with her ex and his new partner. The play uses both grim sadness and dark humour to challenge perceptions of feminism and self-image in the prism of sexual love. Winner of the 2015 NSW Premier's Award for Drama in 2015. 'An intelligent, challenging, deeply thoughtful and highly original piece of work. In a world where gender relationships remain the minefield they always were, and where male violence towards women remains writ large & this is a play for our time and a groundbreaking piece of theatre.' NSW Premier's Award judge's report Anna Barnes' MinusOneSister is a contemporary retelling of Sophocles' classic tragedy, Electra. The teenage siblings take the stage, and loyalties are challenged as each confronts their own grief and guilt. Barnes challenges patterns of blame that persist today when dealing with violence and sexuality. Winner of the 2013 Patrick White Playwrights' Award. 'Barnes has tapped into something essential and immediate about young women, about anxiety and terror and anger and a constant, destructive lack of control over their own bodies and lives.' Time Out Patricia Cornelius' Shit is rife with ugliness. Billy, Bobby and Sam speak with the voices of those who've survived foster care, institutionalisation, and neglect. They love no one and no one loves them. They believe the world is shit, that their lives are shit, that they are shit. Winner of the 2015 Green Room Awards for Independent Theatre: Best Production and Best Writing and shortlisted for the 2016 Victorian Premier's Award for Drama. 'Cornelius looks deep into the hearts and minds of those who have been pushed aside, and finds contradictions that are at once complex, difficult, admirable and scary.' - Ben Neutze, Daily Review

Failure is not on the whiteboard. Feel like you're drowning in paper work? Beaten by the impenetrable weight of office bureaucracy? Adrift in a sea of jargon? You're not alone. Andrew, former rock muso and new CEO of youth music organisation, Staccato, was parachuted in to save the company from oblivion. Mission accomplished, he's setting his sights on implementing a bold, new strategic plan. But the Board has unanimously scrapped the plan and neglected to tell Andrew, leaving him adrift in a world of KPIs, performance reviews and a General Manager who refuses to return from his holiday in Thailand. A Strategic Plan is Geelong-based playwright Ross Mueller's contemporary satire about office life, arts funding and the perils of following your heart. Hilarious, pointed and painfully observant, it's sure to cut close to the bone for anyone who's ever tried to make a difference at work.

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When J G Milford arrives in the goldfields town of Koolgalla in the 1890s to take up the position of assistant editor on the argus newspaper, no one is prepared for the consequences. the paper's newest employee challenges not only the company structure, but its ethical base and even the family that runs it. the Torrents was highly acclaimed when named joint winner of the prestigious Playwrights' advisory Board Competition in 1955. the play's comic style belies an underlying contempt for patriarchal chauvinism, irresponsible journalism and political and business opportunism. It could easily be set in the 1990s

the Green family has moved out of the inner city into the Western suburbs. the family's move has been prompted by Dad's political ambitions. When the local MP drops dead playing squash Dad seizes the opportunity to satisfy these lifelong political ambitions. However, his political leanings so horrify his sister, aunt Dorothy, that she decides to stand against him. aunt Dorothy sees Dad as a traitor to Labor ideals, the ideals of Ben Chifley. Dad is unperturbed for he knows son Kenny, a local football legend, is on his way home and will bolster his campaign. Sadly for Dad Kenny is not the person he was. the family is thrown into turmoil in this political satire told with the addition of twelve rollicking songs.

Meet Augusta Macquarie: Her Excellency, patron of the arts, formidable matriarch, environmental vandal. Inside her triple-glazed compound, Augusta shields herself from the catastrophic elements, bathing in the classics and campaigning for the reinstatement of global reliance on fossil fuels. Outside, the world lurches from one environmental cataclysm to the next. Meanwhile, her sister, Olympia, thinks the best way to save endangered species is to eat them. Their niece, Basra, is intent on making a differencebut how? Can you save the world one blog at a time?

Tarantino meets Deadwood in this full-throttle drama of our colonial past, written by the indomitable Leah Purcell. Henry Lawson's story of the Drover's Wife pits the stoic silhouette of a woman against the unforgiving Australian landscape, staring down a serpent - it's our frontier myth captured in a few pages. In Leah's new play the old story gets a very fresh rewrite. Once again the Drover's Wife is confronted by a threat in her yard in Australia's high country, but now it's a man. He's bleeding, he's got secrets, and he's black. She knows there's a fugitive wanted for killing whites, and the district is thick with troopers, but something's holding the Drover's Wife back from turning this fella in& A taut thriller of our pioneering past, The Drover's Wife is full of fury, power and has a black sting to the tail, reaching from our nation's infancy into our complicated present.

After nearly losing his mind in the abandon of 1960s America, young Danny finds his way again with the help of an enigmatic sensei. At a New Jersey karate dojo, he and other mislaid souls make their way back into the world, and Danny bumps into a woman called Lois. Meanwhile, in present-day Australia, Danny's long-lost grandchild has decided to become Patti Smith& From the marvellous mind of Lally Katz comes a modern romance about wanderlust, love and karate. Inspired by the true events that brought her parents together, Back at the Dojo is a ravishing, nourishing story about the myths families live by.

Reading like a survival manual for aspiring filmmakers, There's a Fax from Bruce is a fascinating insight into film making in the 1990s from two of Australia's most successful film practitioners. Between 1989 and 1997, Bruce Beresford and Sue Milliken made nine films between them, two of which they made together. And when they weren't on set, they used the fax machine to stay in touch. As well as taking care of business, the faxes were a commentary - sometimes droll and often wry - on life around them, written to amuse and liberally laced with industry gossip. Sent from Broome and South Africa and beyond, they make a fun, fascinating, informative and ultimately charming read.

Written in Australian poetic vernacular, Boy out of the Country tells a story of land, family and belonging. A family property, worthless for generations, is suddenly zoned as part of a regional housing estate to accommodate an ever increasing urban sprawl. At this moment of shifting economies and loyalties, Hunter returns from a seven year absence. Finding his boyhood house boarded up and his mother in a retirement home, Hunter goes in search of answers. And he starts with his brother Gordon.

A comedy, a family, ten actors, a landscape (view of the Adelaide Hills), a great deal of conversation about politics and life, Christmas, large hopes, five tons of love.* The Great Fire is a big new play about us  middle Australia in 2016. Many years ago, in the 1970s, in pursuit of a good life and a sustainable future, Judith and Patrick built a house in the Adelaide Hills. They raised the kids here. As time wore on, bit by bit, the family drifted both from the house and the dream it was born from. Now its Christmas, the first grandchild is on the way and all three generations have gathered again. In the tinderbox heat of summer, Judith is at a crossroads: can the life they pursued in the first place come good again?

Juliet and Clinton are in love. Guileless, sweet, all-encompassing love. However, love is not without its impediments. Standing in the way of their eternal happiness are Juliets mother and sister, whose disapproval is of the most high-brow kind. Justin Fleming has audaciously brought Molieres Les Femmes Savantes ( The Learned Ladies) screaming into the 21st century and created a sassy, Sydney story filled with linguistic dexterity, wit and rhyme.

The past is what you make it. John saw his brother Michael die. He seems to have forgotten it, until now. His brother Peter saw it too, but remembers things differently. Together, they revisit the past in search of a common truth. But this search has terrifying, unexpected consequences for them both. Winner of the Patrick White Playwrights Award in 2011, Phillip Kavanagh is a playwright of exceptional delicacy. Replay is a beautiful meditation on the fluidity of life, childhood nostalgia and the fallibility of collective memory. It reminds us that moments of chance, lost or taken, can determine our destiny.

Gaza, 2008. A Palestinian journalist writes poetry on the beach. A doctor must decide to stay or leave. Then come the missiles and the phosphorus showers. This is a furious and tender exploration of the fragility of freedom. The national collides with the personal as activism and reporting take to the stage. Tales of a City by the Sea uses poetry, tenderness and humour to explore the love between those who have choices, and those who do not. Language fails us when it comes to displacement and grief; yet Samah Sabawi's language cracks grief open and remains present, like the sea.

This is a story that begins with nothing. . . An unmarked grave containing the bodies of my great-grandfather, Owen Roe O'Neill, and his young daughter. A little further away lie the graves of other family members. All have tombstones and gravesites. Only Owen Roe has nothing. Thus begins an exploration of ancestry - of memories, secrets, lies and ghosts.

Somewhere in the Swiss Alps, grande dame of crime literature Patricia Highsmith lives with an impressive collection of books, and a somewhat sinister collection of guns and knives. She finds solace in her solitude, her cats, and cigarettes. But when a mysterious international visitor arrives at her perfectly secluded home, her love of fictional murders becomes a dangerous reality.

Midnight. Central desert. A Troop-Carrier rolls through the bush, trapping its sole occupant - Ash - upside-down, inside the car. Ham - a local SES volunteer - comes across the accident. He CBs into Alice for an ambulance and goes into emergency response: cutting Ash loose from the car, stabilising her, administering CPR. . . In a house on a rural block outside Alice Springs, Mia is gripped by grinding stomach cramps; enough to bring a woman to her knees. She's alone way out here, trying to hang on to the tiny life growing inside her. Ash finally gasps her way back to life - broken, but intact. Ham waits for the ambulance to arrive and does what he's trained to do: bandages her bleeding head, splints her broken leg, lights a fire to ward off the night. He keeps her talking, cracks bad jokes, takes her mind off herself. Makes her feel warm, and safe. Mia hangs on to her baby with everything she's got. If her husband were here, he'd know how to help. He's trained for it. But he's not here. And she has no idea where he is. Her body finally makes its own choice, and Mia watches her baby slip out of her - too premature to survive. She crumbles, racked by grief and loss. As a single fraught night unfolds, time shifts on its axis and three worlds collide: from the past to the present, and back again - scattering broken pieces of empty along the way. Broken wrestles with matters of chance, choice, hope and fate. It poses the question: "When you find yourself empty, how do you start again?"

ATYPs annual production of seven-minute monologues for 17-year-old actors has changed the landscape for young writers and performers in Australia. Since the program was established in 2011 The Voices Project has supported the professional development of more than 120 young playwrights, resulted in six publications by Currency Press, instigated ten short films, been broadcast on ABC Radio National and performed by schools, youth theatres and independent companies in every Australian State and Territory. The films and on-line resources have received more than 1 million views world-wide. But all good things must come to an end. Directed by one of Australias masters of new writing, Iain Sinclair, this final season explores the theme of departures. Always surprising, tender, shocking and funny, The Voices Project has given a generation of young Australians monologues that speak their language. Its always sad to say goodbye.

David Williamson is the most popular, prolific and produced playwright in Australian history. These four comedies consolidate his place as our greatest dramatic entertainer. in Jack of Hearts, Williamson has written his charm into a lovable loser who does his best to disprove the theory that nice guys always finish last. In Cruise Control three philandering, bickering and workaholic couples board a cruise ship travelling from London to New York for seven days of marital healing. Dream Home follows Dana and Paul, whose dream turns into a nightmare when they discover their perfect beachside flat is festering with neighbours' grudges, death threats, come-ons, heart-to-hearts, the smell of oysters, with Paul's ex-girlfriend living upstairs in the throes of regret. In Happiness, Williamson follows Roland, a Professor of Wellbeing and his cynical wife Hanna as they grapple with the elusiveness of the emotion. Williamson turns his unflinching gaze on the foibles and follies of married life and life itself.

It's Ladies Day at the Broome races and the divinely beautiful Mike is the toast of the track. But amongst the froth and festivity, a brutal act of violence reminds us that life is not just all swishy hemlines, debonair gents and fascinators galore. Alana Valentine is one of Australia's best playwrights. Known for her incredibly successful verbatim works, she takes her interviews and research with individuals and communities, and mixes them with a healthy dose of drama. The result is powerful, thought-provoking theatre in which the voices of her protagonists ring absolutely true. Alana spent months interviewing the gay community of Broome to create a play that asks questions about tolerance, isolation, love, hope and the right to have your story told. Griffin is proud to present the world premiere of Ladies Day - a vivid, richly evocative play with a big heart, directed by Darren Yap.

Its summer 1965 in a small, hot town in Western Australia. Overseas, war is raging in Vietnam, Civil Rights marches are on the streets, and womens liberation is stirring  but at home in Corrigan Charlie Bucktin dreams of writing the Great Australian Novel. Charlies 14 and smart. But when 16-year-old, constantly-in-trouble Jasper Jones appears at his window one night, Charlies out of his depth. Jasper has stumbled upon a terrible crime in the scrub nearby, and he knows hes the first suspect  that goes with the colour of his skin. He needs every ounce of Charlies bookish brain to help solve this awful mystery before the town turns on Jasper. Kate Mulvanys adaptation of Craig Silveys award-winning novel is wise and beautiful  it features a cast of finely drawn teenagers and grown-ups, all searching for their own kind of truth. A coming-of-age story, Jasper Jones interweaves the lives of complex individuals all struggling to find happiness among the buried secrets of a small rural community.

Australia's best-known playwright returns to MTC as we've never seen him before, using the greatest media scandal of modern times as the launchpad for a maverick theatrical presentation. Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne to one of the most powerful families in the nation. Spanning most of Murdochs lifetimefrom his early student days at Oxford to the most recent phone hacking scandal that rocked News Corp.Williamson asks who the real Rupert Murdoch is and tries to uncover what makes this complex and fascinating character tick. In the process Williamson peels back the façade and we glimpse the character of an apex predator who almost single-handedly built a media empire that spans the entire globe.

The first of its kind, this timely anthology brings together six contemporary Australian plays that offer a range of narratives and perspectives on asylum seekers. A vexed issue within the Australian community - particularly among politicians, who often use asylum seekers to further their own ends - this collection contributes to Australia's ongoing discourse on unauthorised asylum seekers, immigration detention, border control and the right to belong. This eclectic collection includes CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident) by version 1.0, a smart, ironic verbatim work that deals with the Children Overboard Affair and the SIEV X disaster; The Rainbow Dark by Victoria Carless, a surreal domestic satire about immigration detention; The Pacific Solution by Ben Eltham, which takes armchair cricket commentary as a point of departure for a farce about the Howard government's excision of migration territory; Halal-el-Mashakel by Linda Jaivin, which looks at the friendship between two detained asylum seekers; Journey of Asylum - Waiting devised by Catherine Simmonds, a series of vignettes based upon the personal experiences of asylum seekers and refugees living in Melbourne; and Nothing But Nothing by Towfiq Al-Qady, an autobiographical play about childhood and war. With a main Introduction as well as separate introductions to each play by Editor and Drama Lecturer Dr Emma Cox, Staging Asylum recognises the crucial role that theatre has played - and continues to play - in one of Australia's most hotly debated and urgent contemporary issues.

Triptych  A Trilogy of New Works explores the world of pressure and success. From our youngest moments to our dying day we all encounter pressure in our lives. Pressure to survive, to be strong, to win, to make the right decisions, to forge the right path, to be successful  but what does being successful even mean? With mental health becoming an increasingly prominent issue for young people, Canberra Youth Theatre has teamed up with three of contemporary theatres most dynamic writers to explore these questions in ecclectic ways. Featuring brand new works from AWGIE award-winning playwright, Lachlan Philpott Silent Disco, Truckstop; Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award-winner, Jessica Bellamy Sprout, Bat Eyes; and emerging Canberran playwright, Olivia Hewson A Frogs Body, Retrieval.

Multi-award winning playwright Alana Valentine brings us two plays that deal head-on with teenage issues fraught with difficulty: bullying, belonging, isolation, identity. Cyberbile: A candid, moving and sometimes shocking glimpse into the online world of todays teen generation. Based on interviews conducted by students, with teachers, parents and their fellow students, Cyberbile is a verbatim-based drama which speaks from and to the hearts of Australias young adults. Grounded: Set against the backdrop of one of the most intriguing events in Newcastles recent historythe grounding of the Pasha Bulkathis is a coming-of-age tale centred around Farrah, a young Novocastrian with a fascination for Newcastles industrial port. Through her obsession we explore universal themes of isolation, belonging and identity and that time in your life when the obsessions of childhood get grounded in reality.

Ned Kelly is about to hang for his crimes. But his final night in prison is interrupted by the arrival of his brother Dan, disguised as a priest. Supposedly killed at the Siege of Glenrowan, Dan is intent on moving north to Queensland and forgetting his past. To do so, he needs Neds blessing and forgiveness. But the last time they saw each other, Dan tried to shoot Ned dead. So begins a brutal confrontation by two titans of Australian history. Facing the sins of their past, each blames the other for their downfall. And neither will escape unharmed.

In the countdown to Christmas the disappearance of a young boy rocks a small town community instigating a chain of events that will alter the lives of everyone involved. For Simon, the world he has built here was a second chance; though still ridden with guilt, in the eyes of the law he has paid for his mistake. Given a new identity, new history and a single confidante, he has successfully buried the truth of his past; even from Jessica, the woman he loves. Will events force Simon to step outside the prison his new identity has become and does the community have the right to know his true identity?

When Robots start thinking for themselves, they decree planet earth will not survive unless all humans are destroyed. They execute 90% of them and send the rest to work in underground sustainable mines. But when Executive Producer Master Bot writes a play, Giles, a human theatre director, is sent up from the mines in the hope that robots will be able to calculate the formula of art. But because Executive can't feel, he can't enjoy the perfect art he makes. So he makes a deal with Giles: if Giles is capable of putting on a play that can make robots feel, he will allow the human race to coexist with robots, if he can't, he will be executed in front of his cast.

Emma the Greek will sail the seas alone to save her father; Noah will search for his wife who flew off a bridge; Elise will fight the dragons snapping at her heels as she drives each night to lull her baby to sleep; Caleb, a curious misfit, will swim vast oceans to prove his love for Sylvia Wist.; Sylvia Wist can climb up waterfalls and jump time and space. She may not be ordinary but then neither is love. At Sea, Staring Up is a richly poetic magical relationship drama that follows the journeys of five characters all motivated by love. Set over three continents and one vast ocean this richly poetic, thought provoking play weaves together a world of people who have lost, or are looking for love.

Gerry is almost 60, and he is going to meet his mother for the first time since he was three. His daughter Sally has had it up to here with him and his problems. The old lady lives somewhere in the UK. Liverpool, according to the records. So Gerry is going there to find out what made him who he is. Holloways brilliant leap of imagination has been to set this story not at its outset half a century ago, but here and now. He has written a series of raw, often achingly beautiful conversations between members of a scattered family. Drawing it all together is Gerrys extraordinary, precarious bid to finally learn what it means to love and belong to a family.

Alone in the museum, in the dark, Marion unravels a ball of string so Michael can venture into a mystery. In recent weeks, strange stirrings have haunted the ancient relics and rumours of a monster abound. Michael finds his way back to her and to an impossible situation. Marion flees and finds herself the prim centre of an over-sexed septuagenarian art group at a seaside resort. Here, Marion is infuriated by Mark, a wayward sommelier with an eye for the ladies, determined to disrupt her lessons and her life. Whimsical, sensual and charmingly humorous, The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars is a love story of mythic proportions. It will lure you into an orgy of antiquity, cupcakes and beachside frivolity.

It's just a little disc. A useful, beautiful thing. . . it holds us together. Two women live alone but side by side. One day they meet over a jar of buttons and an awkward friendship begins. . .Poignant and funny, Button is about an awkward friendship, longing, life, death and the living in between.

Out of Place is a beautifully crafted collection of seven-minute monologues presenting young characters that laugh, tease and tell stories to make your toes curl. Out of Place is the latest instalment in The Voices Project, atyps overwhelmingly successful program designed to nurture and showcase the talents of Australias best young playwrights. Each piece takes a captivating look at what happens when people are placed just outside their comfort zone. Out of Place is comprised of twelve short plays by - Arda Barut; Christopher Harley; Julia Rose Lewis; Tom Mesker; Joel Perlgut; Isobel Roberts-Orr; Randa Sayed; Krystal Sweedman; Sara West; Amanda Yeo.

When wealthy property developer Michael Devine goes missing, his wife Anne and daughter Amy fear the worst. As the pieces of Michael's disappearance start falling into place, the picture reveals a scandalous secret. On the other side of town, Paula and Gary Anderson have an unwanted visitor. Regretting ever having let Ray Wimple creep into their lives, they're now stuck with his unwelcome and insistent attention. When these two very different worlds collide, one fateful event will transform the lives of both families forever. Inspired by true events, Dreams in White is a gripping thriller of double lives and urban alienation.

contains: At Any Cost? / Managing Carmen / Nothing Personal / Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica / When Dad Married Fury
One of Australia's Living National Treasures and its best known and most widely performed playwright, David Williamson brings us five of his latest works. Now in his 70s, age has not wearied him, and indeed this collection exemplifies Williamson's uncanny ability to be timely, relevant and thoroughly modern. As director Sandra Bates notes in her introduction Williamson is unique in Australian theatre because of his ability to see and understand Australia's current circumstances, our society's circumstances right here, right now; indeed to be ahead of what is current'.

in which two larrikin canecutters and their women awaken to middle-age. The impact of the Doll cannot be over-stated. Its success both here and abroad was quickly recognised as a defining moment in Australian theatre history.

"You think we're like, actually all fucked? Like rising seas, and hurricanes and judgement and shit?" Having lost a lifetime of research in the worst floods Sydney has witnessed, Daniel - a climatologist and advisor to the government - isn't in the mood for appreciating the irony of what he should have predicted. Paralysed by the knowledge that the world is consuming itself, Daniel takes little joy in planning for his future - somewhat of a problem for his spirited other half, Fiona. When Fiona tells Daniel they're about to start a family, Daniel must choose between what he knows and what he loves. Between Two Waves asks an anxious, warming world: how do we find happiness in the face of an uncertain future?

The Lunch Hour is set in a box-office call centre. A bunch of would-be artists are secretly writing a play about Martin, their boss - and nemesis - in the hope of winning a playwriting competition. But Martin has penned his own play about his dysfunctional staff and their thwarted lives, which he leaves on their desks as a parting gift and wake up call. The Lunch Hour is all about what we all do to get through the day  the games we play, the distractions we create and the pain of failure. We see ourselves in these characters and recognise sometimes the hardest part about starting or finishing anything in life is being ready. A spectacular, searing and sexy comedy -ambitious, dark and hilarious.

Barassi is the story of a champion Australian Rules footballer and coach, Ron Barassi. Barassi's premiership footballer father wore number 31 in the 1940 VFL Grand Final and was later killed as a soldier in Tobruk. He left a small boy who dreamed of one day being just like his father. That same boy was developed into a champion by a loving, but no-nonsense mother and a formidable foster father, Norm Smith. This is the story of the boy who becomes the legend, and who shapes the mighty game we know as Australian Rules Footballour indigenous game, the game that demands courage, skill, determination, innovation, selflessness, and the bit of 31 that is in us all.

a disparate group of seven work colleagues in a local government office struggle to hold onto their dreams, as they desperately attempt to prevent being completely paralysed by their workplace, and by themselves. Trevor regularly locks himself in the toilet, crying over past decisions that have brought him to this sad impasse. Heather appears perfectly fine but privately despairs that she hasn't been touched for such a long time. Tabitha's affair with her married colleague Grant means little to her but Grant is passionately in love. Having emigrated from Eastern Europe Nina desperately tries to climb the ladder as her useless husband seems incapable. Dim dreams of being a successful musician and plans to stay temporarilyonly it's already been thirteen months, with no end in sight. and Lachlan moves from Sydney to become General Manager only to have his team dislike him almost as much as he dislikes them. The drudgery of daily office life shifts dramatically when a traumatic event in the department forces everybody to take a good hard look at themselves and to contemplate the possibility of changeand to ponder how far they are prepared to go in order to achieve real happiness.

Gerard is 32 years old. a Sergeant in the Australian army. He is a returned veteran of active service in afghanistan and has suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury as a result of his proximity to an explosion. He moves back to his mothers home whilst he is assessed by the military as an outpatient of a repat hospital. Danny is 38 years old. He is at times homeless and has an ongoing battle with alcohol. He sells the Big Issue on the street. Gerard and Danny are brothers. They meet again for the first time in ten years

Sam and Kelly live out west. They spend their lives waiting for texts, for boyfriends and those bitches in Year Ten to leave school so they can have somewhere decent to hang. But the longest wait is till the end of school, and waiting can be deadly. Bored one recess and with double maths looming, the girls escape through the hole in the fence. Hang out at the truck stop on the highway at the picnic table with the flies. Read graffiti. Talk about sex, prostitutes, Lady Gaga. When a truck pulls up. Their hearts race. The truckie's kind of young. And hot. Sam issues Kelly a dar. . .

In 1948, Angela left Malta. Having gathered up five children, she sailed out on the Strathnavar, leaving poverty and the war behind. Her destination: Australia. In Surry Hills, she could build a bright new life. If only she could first learn the language, finish shoring up their dilapidated house, find new friends, get the racist neighbour off her back and keep her son away from sly grog queen Kate Leigh's kids. Back in Malta, someone else has made a journey. Making his way along Kalkara's glistening harbourside, a young man with flowing black hair has returned to claim his past. Paul Capsis is walking home. A journey that begins at a kitchen table becomes a sprawling family history and a fitting tribute to a much-loved matriarch.

Moth: Explores themes of friendship, bullying, mental illness, and the hierarchy of the schoolyard. Sebastian is a terminally unpopular fifteen-year-old suburban kid, with an overactive imagination and an obsession with anime and death. His only friend, Claryssa, is an emo Wiccan art-freak barely one rung higher than Sebastian on the social ladder. What starts as just another night drinking down at the cricket nets soon gives way to an ecstatic vision that leaves Sebastian unconscious, their friendship left in ruin.
Home Economics: A series of five vignettes balanced on the axis of sex and food. This delicious series of character studies are ruthless, biting and critical but also extremely human and touching, revealing the authors genuine fondness for his characters.

Mr. Melancholy: An absurd comedy of solitude and sorrow. Three hermits, living in a lighthouse without a light, discover a runaway circus clown washed ashore.
Footprints on Water: A darkly comic parable of belief and judgment. A religious zealot wills God to wipe out his morally bankrupt village so he can start the world again.

When social worker Ant discovers Currah, a young indigenous girl with a horrific past, he's certain he's found the way to make a difference. When literary agent extraordinaire Ronnie Lowe discovers Currah, she's certain she's found marketing gold. Now Currah's got the world at her feet, an army of fans and isn't returning any of Ant's calls. Finding himself flung aside, Ant will do anything to be part of the spotlight. Inspired by the recent spate of fabricated misery memoirs, A Hoax is a vicious satire on the politics of identity, modern celebrity and the peddling of abuse culture.

Remixing Politics includes the texts of three documentary theatre productions from the acclaimed political performance group version 1.0, including CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident), The Wages of Spin and Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue. Featuring a new introduction from verbatim theatre expert Dr. Caroline Wake, Remixing Politics is a truly unique collection, and an invaluable resource for theatre students, teachers, actors and scholars focused on contemporary documentary and verbatim theatre.

Promiscuous prophet or philandering fool? Mary MacLane is a woman you'd be mad not to meet. More than one hundred years ago, The Story of Mary MacLane set America aflame. A shocking confessional from a 19-year-old girl who refused to succumb to the corset-bound prudery of her age, Mary's scandalous memoir broke all the rules - and sold over 100,000 copies. Today, Ride On Theatre's Bojana Novakovic and Tanya Goldberg bring Mary's writings to the stage in a bold and magical monologue for two' backed with original music composed and performed by You Am I frontman Tim Rogers. The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself will whirl you through a kaleidoscopic tale of the greatest genius you've never heard of, defy you to look deep within and dare you to dance with the devil.

Only loosely tethered to shore but never ready to set sail, Col, Baxter and Jackie have made a jumble of boats in a Fremantle marina their barely floating homes. It's Australia Day, and as the city noisily celebrates around them, they just want to hole up and be left in peace. When Dee, a young English backpacker, stumbles upon them with far too much anger and alcohol in her belly, she well and truly rocks their boats, and the past they want to escape from gets dragged up like jetsam from the sea.

A fictionalised account of a true incident - the grounding of British Airways Flight 149 at Kuwait International Airport during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - Black Box 149 explores the impact of war and terror on the lives of civilians. Written as an intense psychological and emotional journey, the play explores secrets, betrayal and guilt, and how the personal is impacted by the political.

A gripping, intelligent and unlikely story that sees coming of age meet historical apocalypse. Set in Berlin, 1945, three young boys huddle for days in the sewers as Russian tanks rumble through the streets above. Through membership of the Hitler Youth, the boys are conditioned to fight to the last bullet but, almost paralysed by fear and indecision, they bicker among themselves as they determine how to survive. A play about history and our children, warfare and freewill.

Side by side in a leafy suburb, Thom lives in one flat, Alethea in another. It's pretty clear that their respective, unsatisfying lives would improve enormously if they just met each other. But with a wall literally between them, this seems highly improbable. Then there's the building's Power Box, having an existential crisis about the eventual collapse of the universe, and the super nova from five thousand years ago. Then there's time travelling on an equation for the speed of light and too much sugar. There's demon magpie attacks, laptops in love, cats dancing to Prince and sock puppet nightmares. And a tiny prayer by the Wall, hoping that all of these pieces can come together for one magical moment of love.

A family under threat - from what, we don't know - hires a young security guard, Chris. He spends long hours, day and night, by the pool, watching. One by one, in their private universes of plate glass and good food, each family member is drawn to Chris. A dangerous game of fantasy and privilege begins. Every Breath is an extraordinary debut written by a theatre-maker at the top of his game. Darkly funny, sweetly eerie, and strangely familiar, this is about what happens when prosperity gives us the licence to see the world as we want to see it.

Namatjira & Ngapartji Ngapartji go right to the heart of the intersection between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experience. These stories of family, friendship, land, myth, life and death are contextualised within the social and political framework of their times. They resonate universally, yet at the same time capture unique moments in Australian history and experience.

Inspired by diaries, letters and post war writings The Girls in Grey tells the stories of three Australian Army nurses during WWI. From the splendour of sunsets over the Sphinx in Egypt, to the barren shores of Lemnos Island and the muddy sludge of the Western Front, they battled horrific working conditions, witnessing the horror of war and the devastation of young men involved in front line conflict.

Late one night in the gutted façade of a building primed for redevelopment, a group of security workers, labourers, and a local teenager find themselves haunting the same territory. One by one they rule a line in the sand, and by dawn theyre set for a showdown over who builds the future and who gets to own it. Buried City is an ambitious new work about ever-changing cities like Sydney  where waves of immigrants make new lives on old land.

A group of more or less ordinary Sydneysiders go about their lives: Anna makes toast, Henry dresses for work, Milla catches the train to school, Moses deals drugs. But hovering above this unholy parade of life is the sobering fact that Milla will die before her 15th birthday. Baby Teeth looks at the humdrum world around us and sees something radically alive. Dogs, Paganini, figs, an eight-year-old Vietnamese violin prodigy, morphine, clear skies and a Latvian immigrant are amongst the magnificent conflagration of ingredients which make up this wonderful, funny play, written specially for Belvoir.

If you mess with the Ancient Greeks, beware a little blood. In the charnel house of Greek legend one room is forever reserved for that most ferocious of tales - Thyestes, the deposed king whose sons were slaughtered and served as a feast to their unwitting father. Treating mythological atrocity as contemporary reality, fast-track director Simon Stone retells this Greco-Roman epic as a series of domestic scenes exploring the mundanity of violence. Terrifyingly observed, savagely comic and ultimately heartrending, Thyestes is a modern journey through the darkest of legends.

A short, sharp, evocative collection of monologues written by some of Australias leading young and established playwrights. Each piece is crafted for an actor aged between 16 and 20. Subtle, uplifting, poetic and funny, these pieces are as exciting and diverse as the young actors that perform them.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What happens when one person's culture is another's crime? Ten years ago in north-eastern Laos, Klaudia ran out on Hayden. Now they meet up again when Hayden needs an anthropologist to be his expert witness in the trial of Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua recognise, in Chan's confused signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity

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.