Playwriting Australia's Showcase Collection 2008

This is the first ever collection of plays showcased by PlayWriting Australia at the inaugural National Play Festival in Brisbane in February 2008. The eight plays were published on a limited edition promotional CD which is not available for sale. However you can still buy the individual plays. These eight fine and varied imaginative worlds showcase the very best in new Australian work. Between them, they encompass broad comedy, moving drama, domestic intrigue, provocation and roller skates.

THE PLAYS

Mary Rachel Brown

AUSTRALIAN GOTHIC

Clair, an activist and nurse, is being held without charge as she is interrogated by ASIO officer August. Clair's parents, Sonya and Erich, are aging East German immigrants still haunted by life behind the wall. Set in contemporary... more

Ross Mueller

CONCUSSION (Currency Press)

A man, Caesar, wakes to find he is hungry. He wakes up horny. He is mourning. He doesn’t know why. He is concussed. Why is he not in hospital? What of the voices - the Blackberry, the brothers, the hammer in his hand? In a strange... more

Rosalba Clemente

HELLY'S MAGIC CUP

There’s a hundred fire-breathing dragons and a million bees that will sting you to death and a red beast that will squish your dead body in its mouth like strawberries! Eight-year-old Loo D’Oro is in touch with the grassiest of... more

Sue Smith

IN THE VIOLET TIME

Set in inner city Sydney in 1931, and narrated by 12-year-old Violet, 'In the Violet Time' tells the story of the Harwich family. Violet’s father, Liam, a Balkan immigrant, struggles to find work along the Hungry Mile of the Sydney... more

Kylie Trounson

THE MAN WITH THE SEPTEMBER FACE

It’s 1983. Jesse wants to make it big in roller skates. His coach (and Mum) Naura, runs the tuck shop at the local rink. Newbie Harriet and her naive Marxism intrigue Jesse, but skating is only a hobby for her. Wolf, the rink’s... more

John Fraser

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS

Pat and Ronnie work the lighthouse at Muckle Flugga - neighbour to 46,000 gannets, 200,000 puffins and endless stacks of rocks. Gale-force winds fuel waves that lash the lighthouse twenty-one hours a day, a lighthouse that sits on a... more

Steve Rodgers

SAVAGE RIVER

This is the story of three searching souls at the edge of a river, not far from a real place called Savage River, now just a dam, a mine and a ghost town in Tasmania’s remote north-west. Kingsley forages out a living up at the... more

Sven Swenson

WIREDANCER'S WALTZ

Elderly, deaf Artie Fuchs leaves his door key out each day for home helpers. Today he’s not only old and deaf, but he’s dead as well. When Frank, the food deliverer, and his pregnant wife Judi find Artie on his kitchen floor, they... more

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