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SAVAGE GRACE Winner of the Rodney Seaborne Playwrights Award. When an American HIV specialist doctor, Dr Tex Clark, visits an Australian hospital, part of his residency is spent with a bioethics Professor, Robert Bavaro. Although the two clash over ethical issues especially surrounding euthanasia, a passionate love affair based on humour and honesty develops between them. As Dr Clark moves increasingly toward the prospect of assisting the suicide of one of his terminally ill patients, the stakes escalate, threatening both their careers and shifting the moral ground under them. A play which asks the question,"Is it possible to love someone with whom you profoundly and completely disagree?" |
RUN RABBIT RUN In October 1999, 40,000 people flooded downtown Sydney to protest against South Sydney Rabbitohs being thrown out of the premiere Rugby League Competition. Undeterred, Souths took to the courts, first losing an injunction and then their case, which lasted forty days and forty nights. In November 2000, 80,000 people took over central Sydney to vent their anger at the failure to reinstate Souths. It was the biggest sporting rally in Australia's history. Then in July 2001, the Federal Court voted two to one to support South's appeal and the NRL invited the Rabbitohs to rejoin the competition. An impoverished inner-Sydney working class football club had taken on the biggest corporation in the world and won. In the spirit of 'Aftershocks' and 'The Laramie Project', Alana Valentine has collected the furious, passionate and deeply moving stories of past players, supporters, club staff and lawyers, and woven them into a remarkable human drama of courage, honour, loyalty and friendship. Whether you are a rugby fan or not 'Run Rabbit Run' will make you laugh, and perhaps unexpectedly cry, as this group of quintessential Australians honour the great Aussie tradition of the underdog and express their passions in their own words. |
COVENANT Covenant is the story of three friends - Rebecca, Truc and Savas - who decide, as a kind of friendship pact, to steal icons or objects from each of their religious houses of worship. Rebecca is an Assyrian Christian, Truc is a Vietnamese Buddhist and Savas is a Turkish muslim and they are determined that their parents edict of 'stick to your own kind' will be neutralized by their common act of bonding. But the thefts produce conflict between the religious communities that they could not have predicted. Will all three retreat to a position which rejects interfaith friendship or is there something that the young adults can resolve to find their way forward? Performed by and written in collaboration with 19 young adult actors and residents of the Fairfield area, this is theatre which confronts and reveals the experiences of Australian multicultural young people. Covenant inspires hope for an Australian future informed by interfaith understanding and co-operation. |
BUTTERFLY DANDY It is 1905, and in Australia women have just achieved the right to vote. Mirabella Martin is a highly successful, but rapidly ageing, soubrette. She wants to catch the eye of Harry Rickards, boss of the Tivoli Circuit, but she thinks she needs to find a new act to secure her place on a bill dominated by American and British theatrical imports. Her pianist, Tommy, tells her about the rage in the home country for male impersonation and encourages Mirabella to discover the power of pants. Mirabella hates the idea, resists the idea, tries to burn the trousers that Tommy has loaned her and only very reluctantly, and without any other options, takes to the stage cross- dressed. The audience love her and gradually, very gradually, Mirabella begins to embrace the liberation and opportunities that her on-stage persona create for her. But when Harry Rickards finally turns up to see her, Mirabella is faced with a heart-wrenching decision between the he that she's learned to embrace and the she that might secure her future. A delightful and very funny cabaret style show, Butterfly Dandy is a story about the pleasures and challenges of finding 'the new you' in the most unlikely place and of realising that the 'ideal man' might be closer than you think. |
THE CONJURERS Nominated for a 1997 NSW State Literary Award as Best Play, and a 1997 Australian Writers' Guild Award. Two magicians are touring their show along the Great Ocean Road of south-western Victoria. The further down the coast they travel, the more they are drawn into a mystical world of self-realisation and discovery about one another and the country around them. When the magicians assistant, Gala, begins to conjure out of the sea the ghost of a Sea Captain, whose ship was wrecked on rocks in 1845, the drama becomes a life and death struggle between reality and illusion. |
SPOOL TIME It is Federal Election time and like all of us, Riley Calasso has to vote. She is streetwise, maternal, conservative and reclusive. One woman, four personas caught in a treacherous web of fear and confusion, wrestling with the internal self. This funny, topical, sharp and sexy show has been written especially to show off the talents of a virtuoso female performer. Which Riley will get the vote? What scheming and fighting will there be before one of her selves wins the right to do so? A political thriller about personal choice. |
OZONE A contemporary drama of life, death, and world changing deals. For four Australians flying home, the presence of an American Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry on the flight inspires desperate action and compelling revelations. Can the human race be saved from the worst excesses of environmental pollution, or are we stripped more by the pain of love than anything the sun can do? Set against a surreal landscape, this play traces the lives of five characters through a maze of comedy and treachery. It reveals the need for 'personal ozone' in a world where lives spiral out of control and the heart is the most vulnerable organ of all. |
GLASSY EYED Inspired by Wagga Wagga's astounding art glass collection, this is a series of monologues in which human nature is refracted through the many metaphorical aspects of glass. A man contemplates what he does not know of his mother as he holds one of her frosted glass vases. A teenage girl with spectacles describes how she torments and teases male commuters on her local railway station. A shop assistant who sells glass describes her life. A glass artist cuts it with an angle grinder. A woman visits the Glass museum in Murano. |
LOVE POTIONS Three stories of sexual seduction involving tea, wine and chocolate. A man and woman consummate a ten year old passion over a cup of tea. Two teenagers negotiate their first sexual experience over a glass of wine. A husband and wife understand their sexual stagnation because of a box of chocolates. But then there's the post-coital second act. |
PARRAMATTA GIRLS Nominated for a 2007 Helpmann Award Dramatised from the real life stories of ex-inmates of the Girls Training School (GTS), Parramatta, Alana Valentine's history-making play exposes in moving detail the experience of young Australian women at this notorious inner-west punitive institution. Operating since 1887 as a home for abandoned, at risk, and 'criminal' girls under the age of 18, it was renamed GTS in 1947 and did not close until 1974. During those years, interviewees have told stories of thousands of women being brutalised, drugged, and confined in solitary for more than a week at a time. It is a sobering, compelling and frequently harrowing tale. Yet the pain and grief that these women speak of is more than swamped by the intensity of the love and trust and support that they offer each other. Suffering is not dwelt on, rather humour and tenderness and astonishing courage radiates from the characters on stage. Most incredibly, this is a story of indigenous and non-indigenous women coming together in strength and pride to tell their common story, their common history of Australia's incarceration of 'uncontrollable' girls. Burning with the fury of those who have never been believed, aching with the comedy of those who have survived the worst that life can throw at them, this is a night of theatre that goes to the heart and soul of being alive. 'Valentine uses her source material respectfully but freely, creating composite characters and fictional scenes.....this (is an) exceptional piece of healing - and unexpectedly humorous - theatre.' - Jason Blake, The Sun Herald |
SINGING THE LONELY HEART Winner of the ANPC/New Dramatists Award Loosely based on the life of Southern American writer Carson McCullers and her journey from small-town alienation to international literary celebrity. Growing up in 1930s provincial Georgia was always going to be difficult for a writer of McCullers' originality and innovation and her family made themselves unpopular with their unfashionable stand against racism in the Deep South. Moving to New York allows Carson to experience not just the liberalism of Northern American thinking but also to explore her own sexuality and literary aspirations. Her first novel 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' propels her to immediate prominence as a writer; by the 1950s she is friend of Tennessee Williams, dinner companion of Marilyn Monroe, darling of New York transvestites. Yet she continues to struggle: with perceived rejection and lack of recognition; with her bi-sexuality and that of her husband; with cultural conformity and ignorance; with constant ill-health and depression. 'Singing the Lonely Heart' does not, however, simply retell the biographical details. Against a theatrical kaleidoscopic background of Southern American freak shows, Northern American drag bars and Parisian cemeteries, the play presents a human drama about what must be sacrificed and what must be accepted in order to be faithful to one's true self. A sometimes hilarious and often moving portrait of an original and deeply creative spirit up against the odds yet resilient, defiant and brave. 'Mc Cullers was a one-off and this play does her great justice, without infantilising her legend, lionising or knocking out a hollywooden heroine. Moving, compassionate, tough, taut and terrific!' - Brad Skye, Sydney Stage Online |
TARANTULA Presented as part of Griffin's Searchlight Program Narcissistic, impervious to criticism, and a pathalogical liar. Scandalous, bigamous, and the ruination of royalty. Countess, dancer and actress. The most generous, most willful, and most self-obsessed woman of her generation was Lola Montez. 'Tarantula' picks up her story on July 8, 1856, when returning to San Francisco from an exhausting and scandal filled Australian tour, Lola's lover, Noel Folland, disappeared from the deck of the Jane A Falkenburg and was never seen again, presumed drowned. Using the conceit of a play within a play, 'Tarantula' traces the story of Lola's life to unlock the mystery of this tragic disappearance, by having a contemporary actress making a play about her hero Lola. Set alternatively in a rehearsal room where the play is being made, and in flashback to Lola's world, the play is an hilarious and thought-provoking examination of the battle of the sexes - both from an historic and contemporary point of view. Erotic, passionate and very funny, this is a play which asks questions about just how much and in what way women's power had changed in the intervening years between Lola and our contemporary heroine, Gina and provides the opportunity for a virtuoso performance both from the gently aging 'Lola' and her ardent young suitor. |
THE SEX ACT Commissioned by the STC Blueprints Programme Two university law students, Marlowe and Neil, decide to turn one of their degree assignments into a play about the passing of the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act. They recruit another student, Olga, who is intensely hostile towards feminists and sees the whole thing as a wonderful way to send up the generation she calls 'gender terrorists'. As the assignment progresses, their own personal flaws, feelings, contradictions and problems in regard to their personal relationships are revealed, and their understanding and estimation of the achievements of the legislation changes. But for Olga, who keeps being visited by a pesky Germaine Greer in her dreams, the process reveals unpleasant truths about herself and her lover and propels her toward a change that is both irrevocable and life-changing. Intercut with these scenes of the young adults in the present, are dramatised scenes of the passage of the legislation involving all the historical participants in the real-life drama - Senator Susan Ryan, representatives of the group Women Who Want to Be Women, Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Opposition Spokesman Ian McPhee, and others. A timely examination of the struggles of feminism in a 'turkey slapping' 21st Century and a confrontation of Australia as the only country in the Western world without a constitutionally guaranteed Bill of Rights. |
EYES TO THE FLOOR Commissioned by Outback Theatre for Young People When girls at the Parramatta Training School rioted in 1961, a special, more punitive institution was set up in a disused psychiatric hospital in Hay, in remote Western NSW. Redesigned to house the ten 'worst' girls in the State, the Hay Institution for Girls became both a threat to maintain order in Parramatta and a site of further degradation and psychological torment for the young women it housed. Forced to constantly keep their 'eyes to the floor', these girls were not allowed to speak to each other and were forced to lay and then break up concrete paths, scrub paint from walls and tend the institution's garden. Picking up the story where 'Parramatta Girls' leaves off, 'Eyes to the Floor' is a moving portrait of hope that survives even in the worst of conditions. Written especially for a young cast, whose ages are chillingly equivalent to the incarcerated girls they are portraying, this is young adult theatre about the triumph of the imagination. |
Plays for Young Audiences and Schools Nominated for a 1996 City of Newcastle Drama Award, this play travelled to the 1988 Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival, in Kuala Lumpur. Two swimmers have their sights set on Olympic Gold: Stace and Igorina. Stace lives and trains in Australia and is starting to make her way up the competition ladder. Igorina lives in an unnamed war zone with little possibility of athletic glory. Their stories are linked by Mark Monroe, a sports journalist and war correspondent whose life is altered and affected by the changing fortunes of both girls. As the Olympics draws near, Igorina urges Stace to an action which could make her lose everything. A play about teenage ambition and the Olympic ideal. |
MULTIPLE CHOICE A play suitable for youth-theatre production. The narrative is of a 17-year-old girl called Gillian Todd. The play traces Gillian's growing awareness of a problem in her ability to control her alcohol consumption. Using music, mime, puppetry and mask work the play dramatises the experience of adolescence through a street-wise, witty, and sympathetic protagonist. |
THE PROSPECTORS Nominated for an AWGIE Award 2001 in the Category Young People's Theatre. Commissioned by the Australian National Maritime Museum to accompany the exhibition 'Gold Rush: The Australian Experience'. Set in 1854, the play begins aboard the 'Julia Ann' as the ship heads from Sydney to the Victorian goldfields. The characters are two miners, one a seasoned prospector, Stan, has come from the Californian fields to seek his fortune in Australia, the other, Frank, is an Aussie 'new chum' fresh to the prospecting game. They forge a partnership to seek for gold but when they arrive on the goldfields, the Ballarat Reform League rebellion draws Frank into the Eureka Stockade and puts a strain on their relationship that won't be resolved till the violence is over. A highly entertaining play about mateship and the relationship between the American and Australian goldrushes, for eight to twelve year olds. |
THE MAPMAKER'S BROTHER Also commissioned by the ANMM, to accompany the exhibition "Oceans Apart: the story of Ann and Matthew Flinders." The play is about the relationship between the great Australian denominator and navigator Matthew Flinders and his less well known brother, Samuel who accompanied him on many of his voyages, including aboard 'The Investigator' as they charted and named the South Australian coastline. The play traces tensions in the brother's relationship and cleverly explains concepts of mapping and navigation essential to the Year 3 and 4 syllabus. |
BONES OF THE BEAST A play for children about a boy who finds the bones of an ichthyosaur, a marine dinosaur, in a farmer's paddock and then struggles to have his discovery acknowledged. A play with songs about how children's achievements can be usurped by adults, and a lonely child who learns how to transform his world. |
Short Plays Anger Lee is a brilliant young musician. Five years ago she left her baby daughter with her mother while she went to Vienna to further her studies. Now she's come back and she wants her baby, but the baby isn't so easy to find. A haunting play about the generative power of the Australian inland, this play was the recipient of the 1989 NSW State Literary Award for Radio in its original conception as a radio play. |
REDFERN HEIGHTS A short play, in verse and prose, set in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern. A poetic impression of the suburb as it travels through one day, the narrative tells the tale of four residents, a non-indigenous woman whose bag is snatched, the drug-addled thief, an indigenous woman who is knocked over and injured on a pedestrian crossing as she returns home, and the policeman who deals with all of them. A play about interconnectedness and the possibility of community. |
SHUDDER A short play about the erotic possibilities of vomiting. |
SWELLINGS An absurdist play about breasts. |
THE KEYS A short play about two people who have nothing left in the world but a set of keys. |
Radio Plays Winner of the 1999 AWGIE for Best Original Radio Drama, nominated for a 2000 Premier's Literary Award in the Script Writing Category. A man goes to a salon that can style his way of speaking, in the same way as a hair salon styles hair. Streaks of dry humour here, expletive extensions there, and a rather special wash to get rid of all those politically correct words. |
SWALLOWING COMMUNION Nominated for an AWGIE in 1998 in the Radio Category. Commissioned by ABC Audio Art's programme Radio Eye as part of their month-long series on meat. This is a programme which extends the concept of meat out into the notion of the 'meat of the spirit'. It investigates the meaning that people attach to the taking of the body and blood of a divine being, in this case, the lamb of God in Christ. The piece combines edited interview excerpts with believers who in some way have been denied communion or have an ambivalent relationship to it because of their sexuality or ethnicity. Parallel to these interview segments is the dramatic journey of two characters, Faith and Doubt. Also in the programme two pastors, a man and a woman consecrate and serve the communion ritual. |
SCREAMERS When Lawrence discovers that his mother Gladys is dead, he goes into shock. He refuses to accept it and against the advice of his lover, Marty, takes her corpse in a wheelchair to the football for the big South Sydney/Manly Grand Final. Screamers juxtaposes emotional trauma with black humour to examine the nature of grief. |
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