AustLit

What do They Call Me? raises questions regarding both lesbian and Aboriginal identity. The three monologues which comprise the play are intricately interwoven and each presents a different view on the impact of legislation from the 1940s through to the 1970s.

Although thrown into jail, Connie Brumbie is at least allowed her Aboriginality. On the other hand, Connie's daughter Regina has been denied knowledge of her true racial background. Having uncovered the fiction of her Eurasian heritage, Regina spends ten years trying to come to terms with her blackness. Regina's sister Alison points out, based on the insights gained through her engagement with radical feminism, finding an identity is not so simple.

The play makes it painfully obvious that we live in a culture subject to the extremes of stereotyping and name-calling. Source: Australian Gay and Lesbian Plays (1996)

'Life is a raspberry—one bite and it’s gone!'

'Olga, Masha and Irina dream of returning to Moscow …

'But time marches on … Soldiers come and go, babies are born, great calamities take place —a fire, a duel—and local girl Natasha takes over the household.

'Life happens while the three Prozorov sisters wait for theirs to begin.

'It’s time to act …

'To Moscow!'

'A bold and absurd new version of Chekhov’s tragicomic classic by Laurence Strangio. This playful translation highlights the heartbreaking yet provocative humour of the play, pricking the tragedy of these siblings who bemoan their lives while those around them get on with theirs.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'There’s this feeling, in my gut. Like a crackle. Makes me feel a bit sick.
Feels like it’s telling me something’s gonna happen soon.
Something’s coming – that’s what I think. 

- From Revolution is Coming, Maybe by Sian Murphy.

'As the world ends in a fire tornado, two young lovers find that breaking up is never easy. In a holding cell, a young woman arrested for graffiti wonders about Cardi B and climate change. The formal on Saturday night is going to be a magical evening – or perhaps more like the revenge scene from a B–grade horror movie. And two new friends need to track down a pet velociraptor – right now – before things get really bad.

'Each year, ATYP brings together 20 playwrights from around Australia, empowering them to create plays that connect with young performers and audiences. The Intersection Festival is the creative reimagining of our popular Voices Project and Intersection plays, giving young people the opportunity to perform brand–new short plays written by some of the country’s best new writers.'

Loneliness, fear, bad dreams, repressed attraction or repugnance, lockdown and sudden escapes, jigsaw puzzles, food deliveries, bad tempers and penguins.
These were the things that stole our sleep for a year, or that rescued, haunted and comforted us.

'In the early days of Covid lockdown in 2020, playwrights Vanessa Bates, Mary Rachel Brown, Suzie Miller, Lachlan Philpott and Katie Pollock came together in a virtual writing group to support each other and spur each other on. There were only two rules: deliver a piece every Monday inspired by events of the previous week; and show up online to read them out. Write down, show up, read out.

'A selection of these pieces have been gathered together in The Curve, a live performance, filmed and streamed by Critical Stages Touring. Like a modern-day journal of the plague year, this collection of monologues and scenes is a time capsule reflecting the lived experience of these five playwrights during the Covid-19 pandemic.

'With humour, drama, surprise and searing honesty, this collection is a deep interrogation of what it means to be alive during ‘extraordinary times’.'

'Seven playwrights. Fifteen plays. Short plays, but whole worlds contained in them. Huge windows into the minds and times of seven extraordinary writers for the theatre. These award-winning playwrights—Donna Abela, Vanessa Bates, Hilary Bell, Noëlle Janaczewska, Verity Laughton, Ned Manning and Catherine Zimdahl—collectively known as 7-ON, have collaborated over multiple projects since they banded together in 2005.

'Gathered here for the first time, Sharp Darts is a selection of some of 7-ON’s best short works, chamber pieces for the stage and for audio. They take us from a lonely caravan on the edge of the ocean, to the footy oval of our teenage tragedies, a soulless suburban shopping mall, a futuristic island with its own language, a boat on a river in the deep deep dark, across a nostalgic backyard fence, inside the implosion of a dynasty, and beyond.

'These sharp, pointed portraits of Australia by some of our country’s best playwrights are by turns dark, funny, surprising, moving and political, but above all inspiring in their vision and creativity.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Like a smack in the face.  That’s how I’d describe it.

'On the precipice of something life changing, a young Palawa man plunges into an exploration of self and Country. 

'Carried with the winds of a metaphysical Flinders Island, the land of his mob and the place where it all happened, he is drawn back to the dawn of colonization. To a woman who bore the brunt of the oppressors’ violence and then forward to her granddaughter, who buried the truth as a means of survival. Stirring up stories together, with parts both  achingly sad and unexpectedly funny, what unfolds reveals by slow degrees painful but important truths.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'You’ve walked past it. Maybe through it. Down the end of Victoria Street, opposite St Vincent’s Hospital—Green Park. It’s picturesque by day, a little eerie by night. And it’s where Warren and Edden are meeting, as a prelude to their Grindr hook up.

'One of them doesn’t look like his photo. There’s an age gap between them (but what’s a decade or three?). And one is harbouring a dangerous secret. In an hour’s time, both will leave the park profoundly transformed.

'Google Maps lists Green Park as “Good for Kids”. But just a few decades ago, that definitely wasn’t the case. For decades, the Wall opposite the park was where rent boys plied their trade for curb-crawling Johns. The public toilet was a spot for secret all-hours hook ups. When the cops dismantled it, in 1988, a cabal of drag queen nuns—the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—built a shrine to a chunk of its urinal. These details are becoming lost to time. But in Green Park, Warren and Edden will be pushed together—and apart—by forces of Sydney’s history that neither of them can comprehend.

'In 2021, Griffin is leaving its home at the SBW Stables and wandering down the road to the real Green Park. Outside the rotunda, audience members will be outfitted with a set of headphones. And together, they will eavesdrop on playwright Elias Jamieson Brown’s finely wrought Darlinghurst noir. To everyone else, the two men talking on a bench might not look like much. But in the gloom of the setting sun, you’ll experience a dangerous psycho-sexual collision… in a very public place.'

Source: Griffin Theatre Company.

'In alpine Victoria, on Gunaikurnai country, a flock of sheep are found with their throats torn open. A woman, a farmer’s daughter, is on the hunt—looking for feral dogs. Rifle at her side, she camps down, thinking she’s alone.

'But she’s not.

'From deep between the eucalypts, a dingo watches her. Heart beating through skin. Bristling with hunger and grief. Waiting for the slightest show of weakness. From Picnic at Hanging Rock to Wake in Fright, the greatest works of Australian Gothic tease a uniquely antipodean horror from the anxiety of living on stolen country.

'In a work of startling poetry, tenderness, and violence, Andrea James (Sunshine Super Girl) and AWGIE-winner Catherine Ryan ratchet this anxiety to epic proportions, in a bloody confrontation between two elemental forces, played out on contested territory.'

Source: Griffin Theatre Company.

'Abigail (Catherine Văn-Davies), a teenager dealing with her parents’ messy separation, follows the mysterious young girl Beatie Bow (Sofia Nolan) back through time – from the hustle and bustle of Sydney’s The Rocks in the present day to the year 1873, when the suburb was full of struggling immigrant families, gangsters and a whole host of larger-than-life characters. With the help of Beatie, her wise grandmother, and the whole Bow family, Abigail goes on a wild adventure through twisting alleyways of history in a race to find her way home.

'This moving human story is set in and around the real-life suburb that STC calls home and will overflow with history, song and sparkling humour. Grandparents, parents and teenagers will all find something to love in this family story – a combination of Mulvany’s characteristic warmth and vivacity and Williams’ monumental vision.' (Production summary)

'“So now you have the sounds, the visuals, the feeling…this feeling in the stomach, because you know everything is about to go away.”

'David can’t get enough, of anything. Alcohol, drugs, women, gambling – whatever it takes to escape the bark of the black dog.  Consumed by an overwhelming feeling of never belonging anywhere, David’s life becomes a chaotic struggle as he battles compounding mental health issues.

'Breaking the Castle unlocks a sometimes jobbing actor’s descent into the hell of dependence. Days and nights are lived through a thick haze of drugs and alcohol and this bender could be his last, but he doesn’t care – there are worse things than death. Devoured by the back streets of the city David is thrown an unlikely lifeline. Finding himself in the mountains of South-East Asia he is offered a chance at redemption – but he will need to confront his inner demons, traumas and secrets long buried in his psyche.

'Visceral, fierce, and uplifting Breaking the Castle brings a gripping performance from creator Peter Cook as a man yearning for connection. Directed by Caroline Stacey with The Street’s award-winning creative team this exquisitely rendered heartbreaking story opens the line between the seen, the unseen and the importance of belonging.'

Source: HotHouse Theatre.

'A manifesto for finding your voice and the power that comes with using it.

'…she joined the chorus of the sea-doomed and sung the song that only sirens do, thrashing her tail and howling for ​herself.​

'The Mermaid i​s a​ reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s ​The Little Mermaid​, ​created by an award-winning intergenerational team of teenage and adult theatre makers. ​Their re-telling traces the journey of a fifteen year old mermaid and her transformation, obsession, sacrifice, self-destruction and self-actualisation. ​A tragicomedy ​with a teenage chorus that has a screaming vision for a hopeful tomorrow.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'A young girl hits a ball against the tin wall of her family’s home with a frying pan. This is where it all began for Evonne Goolagong. Hers is a quintessentially Australian story about a girl from the bush who dared to dream, and with the unlikely support of an outback farming town, rose to become the No. 1 tennis player in the world, and a household name by the age of 19.

'Evonne Goolagong’s heartwarming story is a celebration of spirit and passion over adversity, and a tribute to a woman whose sporting prowess continues to inspire a nation, giving hope to thousands of young girls across the country. With its distinctively Australian sensibility and humour, Sunshine Super Girl asks us to consider our nation’s future and the part we can play for the next ‘Goolagong’ waiting in the wings.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Tom meets Charlotte in a bar. Tom’s a foreigner on his first trip to Berlin. Charlotte’s a beguiling bartender. They’re both young, smart and charismatic – and in the early hours, they end up back at Charlotte’s Prenzlauerberg apartment. Over the course of the night, desire and longing dance hand in hand with devastating secrets. Are they just two young people falling in love, or are they contemporary victims of history’s undiluted reach?'

Source: Melbourne Theatre Company.