AustLit

'G’day. Welcome to the Yabba. Just passing through?

'It’s the best little town in the world. Things a bit grim? Chin up.

'John Grant is well-read, but an outback misadventure strands him—cashless and jobless—in a harsh and remote Aussie outpost, Bundanyabba.

'So, he makes new ‘mates’: they’re quick with a drink, but with every scull a dark violence lurches forward. Are these blokes fair dinkum, or is there something more sinister at the heart of this little Aussie town?

'On our Beckett Theatre stage, the entire world of Wake in Fright is conjured by the always-evocative Zahra Newman (The Book of Mormon) accompanied by a sonic assault from art-electronica band, friendships. Under the direction of Declan Greene, Kenneth Cook’s iconic work of Australian Gothic horror is felt in the flesh. Bring sunscreen, buy a beer and wear your ear plugs.

'Once we pierce the Yabba’s ocker veneer, you better be ready for the explosive brutality pent up inside.'

Source: Malthouse Theatre.

'On the night of her boisterous marriage—amid corsages, canapés and Clicquot—Justine quietly falls apart. The world will surely follow suit.

'Justine’s sister Claire stages a lavish wedding party at a mansion in the mountains. As the fever dream of the wedding ceremony careens towards disaster, she is drawn to an innocuous red spot in the sky. That spot is the wayward planet Melancholia, on a collision course with Earth.

'Lars von Trier’s epic cinematic masterpiece is reimagined for the stage by ground-breaking playwright Declan Greene.'

Source: Malthouse Theatre.

'FAGGOT (NOUN):

1/ A BALL OR ROLL OF SEASONED CHOPPED LIVER, BAKED OR FRIED

2/ A BUNDLE OF STICKS BOUND TOGETHER AS FUEL

3/ PEJORATIVE TERM FOR A MALE HOMOSEXUAL

'Warren and Kim are happily married—or as happily ‘married’ as two rich, white gay men in Australia can be. Perusing a dinner menu at a pub one night, they are mortally offended by the dinner special: ‘Faggots—with mashed potato and gravy.’

'Flash forward one month. The two men are preparing for a party in highly offensive costumes when they are surprised by an unexpected guest: a highly offend-able academic. To survive this night with their PC reputations intact, these homosexuals will have to negotiate a moral minefield (in heels). The result is a farce of epic proportions.'

Source: Production summary (Malthouse).

'Theatrical wunderkinds Sisters Grimm, creators of the sell-out, award-winning NEON Festival hit The Sovereign Wife, take audiences on an epic, genre-defying journey.

'When a young wild girl is captured in the rainforests of Borneo, all of Holland is set abuzz. The year is 1861, and pioneering neuroscientist Charles Penworth is called upon to raise the child from the pit of her animal nature. But as Lilith learns to tame her feral heart and live amongst the glitterati of colonial Amsterdam, she begins to wonder, who, indeed, is the real savage?

'Theatrical wunderkinds Sisters Grimm, creators of the sell-out, award-winning NEON Festival hit The Sovereign Wife, take audiences on an epic, genre-defying journey – equal parts The Elephant Man and She’s All That.

'With the title role played by Ash Flanders, star of MTC’s one-man comedy Buyer and Cellar, this bold new piece promises to be as mind-altering and caustically funny as all of Sisters Grimm’s work to date.' (Production summary)

'An hour-long comedy bomb of Shakespeare plus ninjas. And zombies.

'The Listies are the maestros of children’s theatre. Their tremendous storytelling, comedic genius and infectious imaginations make kids all over the world fall in love with theatre while howling with laughter.

'Now, they have created a new, very cheeky, interactive version of Hamlet for children. This comic adventure shatters the fourth wall and glues it back together with turbo-charged story-telling and silliness.

'Hamlet is full of thrilling things that kids love in a good story: ghosts, castles, sword fights, fake blood and spooky stuff. Enter super-sonic gags, expertly timed stage trickery and special effects unlike anything kids have seen before and you have a very cleverly disguised Shakespearean tragedy for everyone aged five and over.

'And that’s not all… expect bonus pillow fights, pirates, ninjas, ninja pirates, aliens, ninja pirate aliens, zombies and a bunch of other hilarious stuff as The Listies take kids and their adults on a fun-filled hour of mayhem that mischievously celebrates the excitement and unpredictable nature of live theatre.

'The only thing we can be sure of is that everyone dies at the end – including the audience! ' (Production summary)

'After 18 years on death row, Marvin Lee Wilson was executed by lethal injection. But after a 2002 Supreme Court ruling, his sub-normal IQ should have disqualified him from the death sentence. Strapped to a gurney, his final statement was a plea for recognition: ‘I am a miracle’.

'Taking these words as a point of departure, playwright Declan Greene meets Wilson’s story with a work of monumental scope, spanning three continents and two hundred and forty years. In an 18th Century slave colony, a soldier is sent upriver on a suicide mission. In present-day Melbourne, a man finds himself entrapped by his carer. In Huntsville, Texas, a prisoner awaits his death. And somewhere beyond time and history, a sublime force lays a plan to rewrite the future.

'Set to a transcendent choral score, I Am a Miracle depicts a world bound to the injustices of the past – crying out for intervention. Wildly careening between the epic and the intimate, this is a mind-expanding theatrical experience / determined to change the course of history.' (Publication summary)

'A co-production with Sisters Grimm

'Melbourne theatre stars Sisters Grimm are everything nice, polite Australians fear: a pair of ‘loud, opinionated homosexualists’ (their words) who hold nothing sacred and whose moral compass is so far out it’s bang on. Declan Greene and Ash Flanders plunder the canon with one eye on mischief and the other on a necessary argument. Once the serial numbers are scratched off, their stolen goods are smelted into smart, anarchic comedies that question the world we live in.

'Verdi’s famed Romantic opera La Traviata is the story of Violetta, a lovelorn courtesan who is doomed to choose either a life of disgrace with the pauper she loves, or a life of upscale servitude to a baron. This is not that opera. At least, not quite. This La Traviata is part opera, part protest, part drag show – a freewheeling satire that shadows Verdi’s plot via the sweatshops of Mumbai and the wastepaper basket of the Federal Minister for the Arts.

'By staging an epic Romantic opera in the smallest theatre in Sydney, Sisters Grimm are plunging into the ever-expanding gap between wealth and poverty. Violetta sacrificed her life to uphold her beliefs. Will the heroine of this tale?' (Production summary)

''Calpurnia Descending' sends up the dangers of fame with the tale of Beverly Dumont – a reclusive, drunken, Depression-era Broadway washout. Beverly limps towards obscurity until a naive ingénue appears offering a final shot at glory. It’s the role of a lifetime, but the chalice soon proves poisoned and both women are drawn into a world of paranoia, sleaze and bloody, unrelenting ambition.

'The latest work from queer ‘DIY’ theatre duo Sisters Grimm ('The Sovereign Wife', 'Little Mercy') stars the inimitable Paul Capsis ('Angela’s Kitchen') and Ash Flanders. Rich in wit and piercing cultural critique, this fabulously entertaining work takes two of Australia’s finest male actresses and ignites a backstage Battle Royale.' (Source: Malthouse website)

'Moira and Connor O’Flaherty leave County Mayo for a better life in the Australian goldfields. But all they find in the harsh soil of Ballarat is poverty and heartbreak. As the Eureka flag is raised, Moira makes a terrible pact in order to save her family. The effects of this one night will be felt for generations.

'Spanning one hundred and fifty years of toil, hardship, and devastating et cetera, 'The Sovereign Wife' is one woman’s epic journey across our sunburnt country – from country Victoria all the way to the Simpson Desert. Taking inspiration from The Man From Snowy River, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, and the spellbinding artwork of Ken Done, it is a wild bush-doof through our national identity.

'After vivisecting the Civil-War melodrama (Summertime in the Garden of Eden) and Evil-Child horror films (Little Mercy), DIY drag–theatre troupe SISTERS GRIMM are set to tackle their biggest challenge yet: the Great Australian Frontier Epic.

'"The South will fall, and so will her pride... ...In the greatest love story ever told." Georgia. 1861. A faded Southern belle returns to the family plantation after ten years away from home. But where has she been? Why did she run? And what secrets are buried in the ol' greenhouse? A sweeping romance, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.'

Source: www.sistersgrimm.com.au/ (Sighted 20/02/2012).

'They met online. She’s a nurse in her forties, brats for kids, trapped in a loop of catastrophic debt. He’s in IT, miserably married and trapped in his own loop of nightly porn-trawling. Both of them crave something else – but not necessarily each other.

'Take the plunge into the Too-Much-Information Age. Funny and fiercely written, 'Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography' is a deceptively compassionate cringe-comedy of mid-life loneliness, hidden zip folders and barely concealed desperation.' (Source: Griffin Theatre Company website)

'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. The next morning, he wakes up with a mysterious moth in a jar by his bed, and a calling to save the souls of all humankind. And so begins the Passion of Sebastian ...'

Source: Malthouse Theatre website, www.malthousetheatre.com.au (sighted 10/05/2010)

'Little Mercy. Evil just turned Eight ... Roger and Virginia Summers have it all. He, a successful theatre director. She, a successful drunken housewife. But their charmed lives are empty - they long for a child.

'Careful what you wish for.'

Source: Sisters Grimm website, http://www.sistersgrimm.com.au/
Sighted: 22/03/2010

'A rumbling, growling work of high-camp comedy and Sewellesque despair. This is outrageous, incorrigible, opinionated and disorienting.'

Source: Judges' Report, The RE Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards: Winners 2009 website, www.slv.vic.gov.au/ross (sighted 23/06/2009)

'A spectacular tribute to Hollywood's highs and lows, Pompeii, L.A. plummets into the anxieties and hysteria of silver screen culture.

'Meet the child star. You know the one. Used-up, spat-out and on the fast-track to self-destruction. As his life unravels after a terrible accident, Pompeii, L.A. follows his damaged young mind as it folds inwards and scrambles for an escape. Instead of relief, what he finds is a world in which reality and nightmare collide - a schizoid universe populated by Judy Garland and a host of ex-child stars who are all grown up with nowhere to go.' (Malthouse Theatre website)