RGM Artist Group

DEBRA OSWALD

Debra grew up in Sydney and began writing in her teens. Her first play was workshopped at the 1977 Australian National Playwrights Conference when she was 17, and then broadcast on ABC Radio. She graduated from the Australian National University with an English Honours degree, followed by a year at the Australian Film and Television School. Since then, she has made her living as a writer for film, television, stage, radio and children's fiction. Her novels, Me and Barry Terrific, The Return of the Baked Bean, The Redback Leftovers and The Fifth Quest have been published in Australia and around the world.

Debra's best-known play, Dags, has been produced many times around Australia over the last eighteen years and more recently, has been published and performed in Britain and the USA. Debra's other plays include Going Under, produced by Adelaide's Troupe Theatre in 1983, and Lumps, which premiered at the Q Theatre in 1993.

In 1996, a co-production of Debra's play Gary's House by Playbox and the Q Theatre played in Melbourne, Penrith and the Gold Coast. There have also been productions in Adelaide, Hobart, Newcastle, Canberra and Hjoerring, Denmark.

In 2000, her play Sweet Road was presented in Melbourne and Adelaide in a Playbox/STC of SA co production, and in Sydney by the Ensemble Theatre. Sweet Road and Gary's House were both short-listed for the NSW Premier's Award. The Peach Seasonwas the 2005 recipient for The Rodney Seaborn Prize.

Debra's television credits include Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, Bananas in Pyjamas, Sweet and Sour, Dancing Daze and The Secret Life of Us. Her Rescue scripts have been nominated for AFI, AWGIE and State Library awards.

She has two sons and lives in Sydney.

SWEET ROAD

This road movie for the stage comprises a series of cleverly interwoven narratives in which the peculiar mateship of the road brings together an assortment of travellers who don't initially realise how much they need each other.

Jo spots her husband through a traffic jam; he's kissing another woman. She floors the accelerator and heads west, in a frenzy of grief and tears. She meets the young hitchhiker Yasmin, and is later rescued from a car crash in the outback by Michael, driving a truck to try to get over a tragedy of his own.

Carla and Andy have all their worldly possessions in their car; including the kids and the dog. They've thrown their life into the boot and hope they're driving towards a better future. At a caravan park they meet Frank, who has set off on his big trip without his wife. She died before they could embark on their adventure.

When rainstorms hit the dead flat plains they are travelling over, the voyagers all have their plans and lives disrupted in various ways. Each one of them is affected by the loss or potential loss of the things they hold dear, before the play restores hope and the road opens up again in front of them.

2 acts

6 males

4 females

play can be performed with 6 or 7, using doubling

MR BAILEY'S MINDER

Professional premiere rights currently available.

Amateur licences not currently available.

Mr Bailey's Minder is the funny and heartrending story of a brilliant alcoholic artist and the 'minder' assigned to care for him in his alcohol-induced dementia. Therese, Leo Bailey's minder, is struggling to go 'on the straight and narrow' in Leo's unstable world.

2 acts

4 males

2 females

LUMPS

Sophie and Stuart are made for each other: he's a doctor and she's a part time actress and full time hypochondriac. Love, fame, happiness and success await Sophie if only she can see beyond her medical encyclopaedia.

A poignant and very funny play for 6 actors.

2 acts

3 males

3 females

GARY'S HOUSE

Gary is an angry, loving, car-wreck of a bloke camping with his strident, volatile and very pregnant girlfriend Sue-Anne on a remote bush block.

He's single-handedly building a house, with no money, on land he doesn't really own, desperately trying to finish before the baby's imminent birth. The building site inherits a resident bludger (Dave) who has roamed the world for years living off his 'charm'.

When Gary cops a surprise visit from his powerful, sharp-tongued sister Christine, the tension escalates to dangerous levels...

This is a story about damage and repair, and our deep need to make a home and a family out of whatever bits of scrap we've got at hand.

Gary's House is inhabited by desperate people, people going at each other with chainsaws, and people surprised by joy. The play offers us mad bastards and bludgers, three kinds of sexual rejection, gyprock, babies and romance.

2 acts

3 males

2 females

DAGS

Dags is represented in Sydney, Australia by the literary agency Curtis Brown. Please contact them with any enquiries.

Apply for a licence in your territory, or email your enquiry.