The '01 Collection
The '01 Collection is the third annual Collection from the Australian Script Centre, profiling the work of 30 contemporary Australian performance writers and giving details of the 100 other plays registered with the Centre during 2001. (NB: DOES NOT INCLUDE THE ACTUAL PLAYS.)The '01 Collection is available, and costs $5.00
THE PLAYS
Marcia Ferguson
AUSTRALIAN MARRIAGE ACT (Currency Press)
Sixteen-year-old Victoria Sanders seeks permission to marry her 22-year-old fiance Rod Stojanovski. In Australia, under-age applicants must have permission to marry from their parents and the courts. Vic is refused both and takes... more
Kathryn Ash
BAG O' MARBLES
'Bag O'Marbles' is a serious rummage into the patterns of family behaviour -- what we learn, what we rebel against. Stanley has dominated the hostile landscape of his outback farm for over 50 years. His youngest daughter, Samantha,... more
Verity Laughton
BURNING
June Matthews, an ex-dancer, and her history professor husband, Stephen, return to her grandmother’s large stone house by the sea immediately after the publication of Stephen’s latest, and most controversial book. June finds the... more
John Bishop
COLLISIONS
Into the cruel and greedy Colony of New South Wales rides an asthmatic Don Quixote with a social conscience -- the new Governor, Sir George Gipps. Seven white men are hanged, the first in the history of the Colony to be executed for... more
Stella Kent
CONVICTION
In 1837 Sir John Franklin, Arctic explorer and a man who could not bear to witness the punishment of his own men, arrives as Governor of the penal colony, Van Diemen's Land. Conviction is the story of those unfortunate years.
The... more
Robert Jeffreys
COX FOUR
The dominant theme of Cox Four is the Australian male's fear of appearing feminine and horror of being gay. The play suggests that the failure of some men to recognize anything other than masculine dominance in themselves and society... more
Elise McCredie
DESTINY OF A CAR CRASH
A couple are forced to confront their own relationship and desires when their teenage daughter's burgeoning sexuality threatens to overpower them. A play about the claustrophopia of the nuclear family and one family's attempt to... more
Sofie Laguna
DIFFICULT TO GROW
Difficult to Grow is made up of three monologues telling stories which intersect each other -- each monologue adding texture and depth to the next. Two of the characters are intellectually disabled -- the third is the woman who takes... more
Ramez Tabit
EMPTY SHELLS
Empty Shells tells the story of four young boys coming to grips with their town and their relationships becoming a battleground overnight. It is a complicated story steeped in ancient history and a hundred political positions. It is... more
Hilary Bell
THE FALLS
Sydney, 1895. Meet three Great Liars: Alberta the polygamist; Jack and his plans to hoodwink the world with an outrageous hoax; and Alberta's long-lost sister Nellie, a would-be memoirist. There is also Praise-God, the... more
Duong Le Quy
GRAVEYARD FOR THE LIVING
During the land Reform Movement in 1954 in Vietnam, thousands of innocent people suffered injustice, unnecessary pain and misery and untimely death. This story happens during the period of reconstructuion and revaluation of past... more
Patricia Cornelius
HOG'S HAIRS AND LEECHES
Hogs Hairs and Leeches is eight short plays that, combined, talk about growing old, regrets, memory, fears and beliefs. It examines many relationships: between mothers, grandmothers and daughters, between women who dance together at... more
P. P. Cranney
HOME
Three intertwined stories exploring themes of sense of place, identity, belonging and prejudice viewed through the eyes of a Slavic horse spirit, the Domovoi. 'Homelands' follows the plight of two young refugees from war torn Europe... more
Katherine Thomson
KAYAK
A moral thriller that begins on Sydney Harbour when a sole woman kayaker, in search of isolation from human contact, is pelted with doughnuts by a boy in a passing "tinnie".
The woman seeks revenge, the boy's guardian becomes... more
Evan Watts
A LOST WORLD
A mother and daughter nervously await the arrival of the mother's fiance, returning after disappearing without a trace many years earlier. On his return, they realize he is far from the same man they knew and loved. more
Catherine Fargher
THE MARIGOLD HOUR
The play's narrator, Rosebud, is a sensitive bloom raised on the arid soils of Adelaide. She is her mother's pride and joy until she is plucked and taken to the underworld of steamy, sensuous Sydney -- land of the glitter ball. Her... more
John Upton
MEN OF HONOUR
The time is 1594, the city is London, a dangerous place ravaged by crime, politics and plague. Will Shakespeare falls desperately in love with his Dark Lady, a fellow poet who is already married. When she betrays him with his patron... more
Emilie Collyer
PROMISE
In a small country town, the river is filling with salt. A woman is missing, the air is laden with heat and silent promises. A couple arrives from the city. They become drawn into a slow dance of fantasy and denial. Promise is a... more
Geire Kami
PUNCH!
Punch! is a modern interpretation of the original Punch and Judy puppet show, looking at violence and the human condition. We follow our anti-hero on his journey as he comes to terms with his guilt over a childhood mistake that... more
Reg Cribb
THE RETURN
A career thug and his junior partner in crime take a late-night train from Perth to Fremantle, menacing passengers with boot and fist. This is last ditch masculinity. For an hour or so the bovver boys own the train. It's all they... more
Alana Valentine
SAVAGE GRACE (Currency Press)
Two very different men. Drawn together by sexual passion, driven apart by professional ethics. During his residency at an Australian hospital, Dr. Tex Cladakis, an American HIV specialist, meets bioethics professor Robert Bavaro. ... more
Maryanne Lynch
SHOE BIZ
A woman is standing in a shoe shop..... and has an epiphany of sorts. She finds herself wandering through her psyche as she grapples with the unresolved tensions of her sexual identity. Love, lust and the desire for security vie for... more
Noelle Janaczewska
SLOWIANSKA STREET
Slowianska Street is a requiem. A voice-play about history and memory organized around two specific events: the Second World War and the post-Glasnost opening up of economic and political frontiers. A portrait of a city street... more
Samantha Bews
THE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE
The play is set in the Melbourne telephone exchange in 1952. It charts two distinctive narrative lines. The first examines the resonance of image as it travels through the psyche of the main character. The second follows the effect... more
Cate Furey
THE THIRTY FOUR EIGHTY MAN
Things are busy in the office. The air conditioning is playing up, and management has been investigating a new letter folding machine that will enhance council productivity. Rowie, Lee's sex crazed boss, spends her time avoiding her... more
Katherine Thomson
THIS HOSPITAL IS MY COUNTRY
This moving play examines the life of Elena, a refugee from the Greek civil war who has dedicated her life to working in a children's hospital. Now, with the threat of privatization, she may be asked to go and the memories come... more
Trudy Hellier
TRAPPED
Two men in prison watch two women living in a flat opposite. A black comedy about voyeurism and romantic love. more
Simon Hall
Turnstiler
E109 is starting out in a new job. At first, he's optimistic -- he works at a turnstile, he wears a jaunty little hat. But when he meets Min, the new job starts to go horribly wrong. Despite this, he hopes that he and Min might,... more
Alma De Groen
WICKED SISTERS
After the dementia-related death of Meridee's husband Alec, (a world famous Artificial Intelligence Researcher), her long-time friends Judith and Lydia join Meridee at her Blue Mountains home, where Alec's computer still hulks in a... more
Maggie Power
THE WOMAN WHO FELL UP
Grace Wheeler, a 40-something mother of two who can't quite remember if she slept with her son-in-law last Wednesday, suddenly falls six feet up into the air and stays there. more
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