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AustLit

Best Mainstage Production
Subcategory of Sydney Theatre Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2018

winner y separately published work icon The Harp in the South Trilogy : The Play : Parts One and Two Kate Mulvany , Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2018 11940858 2018 single work drama

'A great Australian novel. A landmark theatre event. A portrait of Sydney as it once was.

'The world premieres of The Harp in the South: Part One and The Harp in the South: Part Two are designed to be enjoyed as one unforgettable, epic theatrical experience.

'This major new work is one of the most ambitious productions STC has ever created. Celebrated playwright Kate Mulvany has adapted novelist Ruth Park’s revered Australian trilogy – Missus, The Harp in the South and Poor Man’s Orange – and spread these beloved stories across two equally ambitious plays.

'The two parts stand alone, but together they offer over five hours of monumental, exuberant theatre. It’s a moving family saga and a celebration of Sydney in all its funny, gritty glory.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2016

winner y separately published work icon The Drover's Wife Leah Purcell , Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2016 11151204 2016 single work drama

'If anyone can write a full-throttle drama of our colonial past, it’s the indomitable Leah Purcell.

'We all know Henry Lawson’s story of the Drover’s Wife. Her stoic silhouette against an unforgiving landscape, her staring down of the serpent; it’s the 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, 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, with a black sting to the tail, The Drover’s Wife reaches from our nation’s infancy into our complicated present. And best of all, Leah’s playing the Wife herself.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2015

winner y separately published work icon Ivanov Eamon Flack , 2015 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2015 8917788 2015 single work drama

'It could be subtitled: ‘How to Find Faith in Humanity – or Not’. This early Chekhov is a glorious ensemble comedy about the fact that the future is looking bleak. Here it gets its first Australian mainstage production. What a fantastic mix of rage and silliness; its characters all torn between making money and getting in on something bigger and more meaningful than themselves. How apt.

'Nikolai Ivanov is going mad. His life used to be full of possibility, but now he’s moneyless on an old farm with his mendicant uncle and his inexplicably happy if slightly criminal cousin. He’s in debt to his neighbours, he has the hots for their daughter, and nothing much makes any sense to him anymore. Oh, and his wife is dying. Life’s all healthcare and making payments. What’s the alternative? There must be an alternative. There must be an alternative!' (Publication summary)

Year: 2012

winner y separately published work icon Medea Kate Mulvany , Anne-Louise Sarks , 2012 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2019 Z1894517 2012 single work drama

'Locked in their bedroom, two brothers play games to pass the time, as siblings do. Off-stage, their parents are having a very famous showdown. At an inevitable moment, the children will be drawn away from their games and into their parents' bitter argument. From there, they will enter mythology as the most tragic siblings of all time.'

Source: Black Swan Theatre Company.

Year: 2008

winner The Women of Troy Tom Wright , 2008 single work drama historical fiction

'Troy is a ruin. The men are dead, most of the children are dead and the surviving women are herded behind wire, awaiting transportation or (hopefully) death. Hecuba, their Queen, awaits her uncertain future haunted by memories, visions and prophecies.

'In a series of hallucinogenic episodes she is visited by her mad, blind daughter Cassandra; her grieving daughter-in-law Andromache and the woman who triggered the whole catastrophe, Helen.

'One of the most powerful and compelling anti-war plays ever written, Euripides' tragedy reels with the consequences of destruction.'

Sydney Theatre Company website, http://sydneytheatre.com.au/
Sighted: 25/03/2009

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