Saturday night, small town Wales, one pub, one party and three lads stuck with their school reputations - the gimp, the geek and the bully. Their dream - to get the hell out Dead White Males: "Triumphant...The neatly lined up ducks of academic absolutism are ruthlessly, and hilariously, assassinated" - Sydney Morning Herald; "Swain is a wonderful creation" - Guardian The 7 Stages of Grieving: "A subtle and complex invitation to experience something of the depth of Aboriginal grieving" - Melbourne Age. Hotel Sorrento: "Has a moody, evocative, literary sweep and scope to it" - Sydney Morning Herald Two: In 1948, in a German town, Anna comes to Rabbi Chaim Levi for Hebrew lessons. As the two study the language, their stories are gradually revealed, raising fundamental moral questions as they try to reconcile their tormented pasts and accept and renew their lives. The Popular Mechanicals: "One of the most rollickingly entertaining nights in the theatre" (Sydney Morning Herald)

Saturday night, small town Wales, one pub, one party and three lads stuck with their school reputations - the gimp, the geek and the bully. Their dream - to get the hell out Dead White Males: "Triumphant...The neatly lined up ducks of academic absolutism are ruthlessly, and hilariously, assassinated" - Sydney Morning Herald; "Swain is a wonderful creation" - Guardian The 7 Stages of Grieving: "A subtle and complex invitation to experience something of the depth of Aboriginal grieving" - Melbourne Age. Hotel Sorrento: "Has a moody, evocative, literary sweep and scope to it" - Sydney Morning Herald Two: In 1948, in a German town, Anna comes to Rabbi Chaim Levi for Hebrew lessons. As the two study the language, their stories are gradually revealed, raising fundamental moral questions as they try to reconcile their tormented pasts and accept and renew their lives. The Popular Mechanicals: "One of the most rollickingly entertaining nights in the theatre" (Sydney Morning Herald)

In the late 1960s, new theatre companies who had a passion for Australianess, were created in opposition to stuffy, mostly imported theatre of no relevance to themselves. This work gives insights on how the new drama explored Australian themes and issues, in a theatre where the playwright had pride of place.

Historical perspectives - Critical perspectives.

Playing Australia explores the insights and challenges that Australian theatre can offer the international theatre community. Collectively, the essays in this book ask what Australian drama is, has been, and might be, both to Australians and non-Australians, when it is performed in national and international arenas. Playing Australia ranges widely in its discussions and includes analysis of Australian practitioners playing away from home; playing with Australian stereotypes; and the relationship between play, culture, politics and national identity. Topics addressed in this diverse collection include: whiteness, otherness and negotiations of Aboriginal and Asian identities; Australian school and college drama; the discourse of Australian professional theatre magazines: Aboriginal Shakespeare; Australian drama and Australian cricket; the marketing of Australianness in Germany; the international successes of Tap Dogs and Cloudstreet. New histories of Australian theatre are offered and practitioners whose careers are reconsidered in detail include high wire-walker Ella Zuila, playwright May Holt, suffrage worker and playwright Inez Bensusan, classicist Gilbert Murray, and commercial playwright Haddon Chambers. With contributions from authors as diverse as Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington and leading post-colonial critic Helen Gilbert, and interview discussion with Cate Blanchett and Tap Dogs producer Wayne Harrison, Playing Australia seeks to pay tribute to the complexities of Australian theatre experiences, to reassess Australian theatre as a significant force in the international arena and to challenge traditional thinking on what Australian theatre can be.

Contemporary Australian Playwriting provides a thorough and accessible overview of the diverse and exciting new directions that Australian Playwriting is taking in the twenty-first century. In 2007, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was William Shakespeare. In 2019, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman. This book explores what has happened both on stage and off to generate this remarkable change. As writers of colour, queer writers, and gender diverse writers are produced on the mainstage in larger numbers, they bring new critical directions to the twenty-first century Australian stage. At a politically turbulent time when national identity is fractured, this book examines the ways in which Australia’s leading playwrights have interrogated, problematised, and tried to make sense of the nation. Tracing contemporary trends, the book takes a thematic approach to the re-evaluation of the nation that is dramatized in key Australian plays. Each chapter is accompanied by a duologue between two of the playwrights whose work has been analysed, to provide a dual perspective of theory and practice.