AustLit

'When a man goes missing from a tiny outback town, his estranged son is forced to navigate its motley crew of residents to find him.'

Source: Production blurb.

Cory and Jasmine, a professional couple in their 30s, move back in with Cory's parents when Jasmine is eight months' pregnant, after Cory loses his job. The longer they stay, the more Cory begins to fixate on his parents' wealth, and to consider doing the unthinkable.

'The most daring, dangerous, heart-stopping intergalactic race in the universe is the Sun Run, a lap of the entire solar system and around the sun. Gamma and Olli are the youngest Sun Runners there ever was and they are ready to race.

'Just days before the big race, Olli and Gamma crash land on Mercury – they’ve got to get out of this intergalactic mess and get back to the asteroid belt in time for the Sun Run.

'Plunge headfirst into an immersive space adventure. With a pair of headphones and a mobile device, you become Olli and Gamma, hurtling across the farthest reaches of the galaxy in your own living room. Sun Runners infuses imaginative, physical play with a cinematic score to create a thrilling action-packed experience. Audioplay is technology without the screens.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Sarena shakes up her family's dynamic when she seeks out a mysterious treatment that gives her the courage to redefine who she is and what she is capable of.'

Source: St Kilda Film Festival.

'Let’s begin with two people.

'Deep in the gloom a phone rings. They take the call. The voice on the line slips beneath her skin and curls its fingers around his stomach.

'You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can barely feel it. You can’t hold on tight enough.

'These people, these sisters and lovers and pilots and brothers are joined deep beneath the surface, below knowledge, down where desire and depravity lie. The line goes dead and these two people catch a glimpse of what’s to come, as it retreats back into the fog.

'A new work from Side Pony Productions (The Confidence Man, The Pride) and The Last Great Hunt (Falling through Clouds, The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer), The Irresistible is a reckless, intoxicating love letter to the subconscious.'

Source: Side Pony Productions.

'The Camper will lead you by torchlight, through the trees and the scrub, away from the safety of others to his dismal tent, cold and isolated. Coaxed inside he’ll tell you of all the terrible things he’s done, the story of a shocking accident that was never meant to happen. And as you sit huddled in the torchlight you’ll wish you never followed that Camper out to that tent in the middle of nowhere, as he unburdens his soul of all its caustic secrets.'

Source: Side Pony Productions.

'A drive to a dress-up party in the country gets complicated bringing out the ugly in everybody.

'Everyone made a special effort for Dave's animal themed 21st. A make-shift lion, mouse, and an unidentified animal pick up a misinformed robot to make the long journey to the remote celebration. On the way they hit a kangaroo which spirals their tenuous relationships into a surreal state of disarray. Hayley is convinced that a dignified burial for the kangaroo is the right thing to do and pours her energy into that plight to avoid her dysfunctional relationship that's not about to end or get better.'

Source: Side Pony Productions.

'Ernest Hemingway loved deep sea fishing, big game hunting and women.

'Hemingway’s love of women led to a long-winded, complicated love life littered with a series of tragically poetic marriages. The inherent theatricality in the demise of so many of his marriages will be the starting point for the development of Side Pony Productions’ The Wives of Hemingway.

'Hemingway had four wives and inevitably blamed each wife for the breakdown of his previous marriage. The overtly theatrical circumstances of Hemingway’s love life coupled with his obsession with death and violence provide fertile ground for a comically tragic narrative. Hemingway was ardently passionate about big game hunting; hunting bears in America and later big game on his many expeditions to Africa. Hemingway saw hunting as a way of bringing a family together, an activity he had done with his father and a tradition he carried on with his sons.

'The Wives of Hemingway draws on two of Hemingway’s texts; ‘The Garden of Eden’ published posthumously which reads as a fictionalised romantic interpretation of the transition between his first and second wife; and ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’; set on safari this story sheds light on Hemingway’s longstanding obsession with power and masculinity. These texts have been a vehicle to delve into some of Ernest Hemingway’s more interesting preoccupations; androgyny, sexual role reversals, homosexuality and haircuts. Hemingway was a great story teller and his variations on the truth seemed to falter with age as he grew biased toward his more distant marriages and remembered these wives with great reverence and sadness which is most evident in his posthumously published texts.

'The Wives of Hemingway follows the love affair of Catherine and Wilson (Hemingway). Catherine’s obsessive love begins to reveal itself through her desire to be a boy, just like Wilson. This manifests through her dressing like him and getting his haircut. The matching duo are admired by a stranger, Helen. So flattered by her flattery, they invite her to get ‘their’ haircut and come on safari with them. As Catherine begins to assert her new found power Wilson’s affections shift from Catherine to Helen and the dynamics of the trio begin to implode. Catherine is reluctant to relinquish her mantle as wife and the three descend into a surreal and brutal battle for love.'

Source: Side Pony Productions.

'The Pride takes a long hard look at lions.

'Bruce, weighed down by his impressive mane, is struggling with the pressure of renovations and taking care of his pride. Bruce knows time is limited, when James, his stronger, more handsome neighbour, starts peering through the windows admiring his home and his family.

'The drama of the jungle never seemed so close to home in this award-winning comedy that explores people’s readiness to forgive, even in the face of gross moral trespasses.

'After a wildly successful season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Side Pony Productions heads to Sydney with this unique David Attenborough meets The Mighty Boosh comedy.' (Source: http://rocksurfers.org/thepride/ )

'Devil’s Gulch: A Dastardly Deed is a gun-slinging melodrama that brings the classic Western to the stage. Complete with a horse choir and fully loaded train explosion, all wrapped up in a wonderfully black and ironic bundle that will make you laugh hard at the characters’ tragic plights.

'Jackson Ryder is the straightest shooting legend in Sweetwater. He’s been living in this one-horse town his whole life waiting on the promise of better things and now the railroad's coming to town.

'His brother Bill is the local Sheriff. The Ryder brothers are all tangled up in Western love because that Mary-Lou is the sweetest little prairie flower in Sweetwater.

'Pistols are drawn when the heartbreak sets in and the brothers’ fight to the death as Mary-Lou lies dying in the dust coughing her little lady coughs.'

Source: Side Pony Productions.