AustLit

'A comedy, a family, ten actors, a landscape (view of the Adelaide Hills), a great deal of conversation about politics and life, Christmas, large hopes, five tons of love. The Great Fire is a big new play about us – middle Australia in 2016.

'Many years ago, in the 1970s, in pursuit of a good life and a sustainable future, Judith and Patrick built a house in the Adelaide Hills. They raised the kids here. As time wore on, bit by bit, the family drifted both from the house and the dream it was born from. Now it’s Christmas, the first grandchild is on the way and all three generations have gathered again. In the tinderbox heat of summer, Judith is at a crossroads: can the life they pursued in the first place come good again?

'Warm, funny, deeply felt, The Great Fire is the work of a brilliant new writing talent, Kit Brookman, with a brilliant ensemble cast. We present it here as a kind of companion to The Blind Giant is Dancing – a pair of plays a generation apart about family, about holding your course, about what will survive of the fading triumph of Australian social democracy.' (Publication summary)

'Three years on from the sudden death of her husband, Sue’s future still feels blank. Her three children are distant and distracted. For the first time in her life, she’s alone. Sue decides to take drastic action: to be surrounded by life, even if that life is vegetable. But when you need to talk, plants don’t necessarily make the best conversational partners.

'So Sue strikes on a radical solution – one that means her children will have to contend with an unexpected new arrival in the family…'

Source: Ensemble Theatre (https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-plant/). (Sighted: 11/12/2018)

'Johann’s super-sized rabbits are his pride and joy. Much to his surprise, the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has taken a special interest, and will stop at nothing to get his hands on them. When a bungled undercover rescue mission transports Johann to North Korea, he finds himself, and the bunnies he betrayed, in a bit of a stew.

'Preposterously based on a true story, A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il is a cunning comic thriller spanning two continents. Crammed with secret agents, espionage, double-crossings and a giant rabbit named Felix, the play is also a pointed parable about betrayal and forgiveness, greed and regret.

'A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il was lovingly raised by playwright Kit Brookman and will be set free on stage by Lee Lewis.' (Publication summary)

'It’s all very well to walk out the door slamming it behind you, as Ibsen’s Nora Helmer did in 1879; declaring yourself at long last liberated from A Doll’s House. But what happens after that triumphant moment? How much exactly does it cost a woman to leave her child, family and husband to choose her self?

'Kit Brookman and Anne-Louise Sarks revisioning of Nora’s iconic story overlaps with Ibsen’s revolutionary play but takes an audience beyond the moment of leaving and follows Nora through into the complications that doubtless, surely, follow her choice.

'In 2014 Nora’s dilemma is still going: just how much will a woman put up with and why? And what are her alternatives to putting up with a situation that makes her diminutive?

'Anne-Louise Sarks makes classics reverberate and resound in a new way. Her 2012 production of Medea in our Downstairs Theatre stunned students and teachers alike. This contemporary production will provide a strong framework for students to hone their critical skills by contemplating texts comparatively across time. She brings her unique vision to this deeply felt play about how to work out your own freedom and become comfortable with your own power.' (Production summary)

'Orestes has come back to bury his father. He has been away a long time. His mother is hardened, his sister is strangely ill. He will see them, he will bury his father, and then, in all likelihood, he will drift away again. But in a bar one night, slightly drunk, he meets a gentle soul called Pylades...

'Kit Brookman's play springs from the myth of Orestes and the House of Atreus, but Brookman's leap of imagination has been to fully dissolve the myth into the contemporary world.' (Source: http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/2013-season-belvoir )

'Tom abandons his sister Sasha by the side of the road. She plunges headlong into the night.

'As she hunts him down she peels back the layers of their shifting relationship, past gender, sexuality and both their bodies.'

Source: Theatre Works program.