'Fifteen-year-old Arki can’t shake the dead bodies of the players he’s killed in his online combat games on his PS4. His mother takes him to a psychiatrist who thinks he has PTSD. In her quest to help her son, she turns to those involved in real world war afflictions including a Major from the Australian Army and refugees from Afghanistan.'

Source: Theatre People (https://www.theatrepeople.com.au/darebin-arts-speakeasy-archimedes-war/).

'The Audition is a new multi-authored work that interrogates the protocols and power relationships of the audition process to uncover what it means to seek asylum. 

'The asylum seeker shares something in common with the actor in Australia.  They are both outsiders of uncertain status.  The asylum seeker just like the actor can become expert at being patient with a force that keeps them waiting without having their hopes dashed.  This is the liminal space that we will explore in The Audition. The stage is a country in itself. With its own rules and regulations. Or lack of them.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'Twenty-one years ago playwrights Andrew Bovell, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves, Patricia Cornelius and Irine Vela came together to create Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?, a series of powerful interwoven vignettes that captured the zeitgeist of Melbourne and Australia in the 1990s. Now the same team reunite to take the pulse of our nation today, with director Susie Dee and an extraordinary ensemble of performers.

'What emerges is a funny and ferocious portrait of a country unable to reconcile its past, uncertain of its future and political vision. The colliding voices that make up this anthem might not always be in harmony, but they cannot be silenced.

'Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? was an ode to tiny struggles writ large; Anthem turns up the volume on the everyday injustices we choose not to hear.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Katherine Stockmann lives in a tight-knit community – she’s woven into the fabric. One day she makes a disturbing discovery: the spa water for which the town is famed is toxic. The community has been built on poison, and the truth must be told. But to her horror, people refuse to believe there’s a problem. What does she do? Does she fight for the truth if it means the loss of income, family, community, identity?

'Ibsen’s 1882 masterpiece in a timely new version by Melissa Reeves, with the superb Kate Mulvany as the insider who finds herself out in the cold.'  (Production summary)

The dilapidated old caravan might be full of musty carpet and faded dreams, but for years a mother and daughter have called it home.

With nowhere else to go, Judy and daughter Donna live on top of each other, knowing the other won’t leave: they’re stuck, and will be till the end.

Judy holds court from the caravan’s double bed, surrounded by pills, a breathing machine and a flat-screen TV. Donna is just desperate not to die there. Donna’s looking to be whisked away by a Tinder date, but as the phone pings and Judy sucks oxygen from a mask in the tiny, cluttered space, they bicker and make up, scream and threaten violence and dream of better things.

Bitter and hilarious, tender and toxic, Caravan is a darkly comic look at life on the margins and the universal need for love.' (Production Summary)

'Loosely based on events that took place in country Victoria in the mid nineties, 'Furious Mattress' is the story of a back-yard exorcism that goes tragically wrong. Convinced that his wife is possessed, Pierce enlists the aid of Annette and Max, and together they battle for the soul of Elsie. As the country swelters in the grip of a heat-wave, even Elsie's death can't shake Pierce and Annette's desperate conviction they have done the right thing, and together they wait for her miraculous return.' (Source: TROVE)

'‘’I killed them, that’s the game. You kill anybody that might kill you.”

'Arki loves playing war games online. He’s also just beat up his English teacher. A psychologist diagnoses something very serious. Soon Arki’s hanging out with Aaron, a disturbed returned soldier, and both start hanging out with Sayf, who runs the best Afghan restaurant in Dandenong. All have been immersed in war. Everyone around them is desperate to cure their terrible affliction.

'But is there a cure for war?' (Production summary)

'A group of young students taking radical action: rescuing a young asylum seeker, then hiding her from the authorities.' (Source: Monash University website)

Three plays by female Australian playwrights, all centring on the 'gap year': the year after the end of high school.

'I have worked quite a bit with Andrew Bovell. We have collaborated on two (and a half) plays, and a movie, in a group of writers/theatre makers called Six. The four playwrights of the group, the other two being Patricia Cornelius and Christos Tsiolkas, have all learned much from each other. It is a privilege to see another writer’s process up extremely close, from the first seed of an idea to the final performance draft. You get to see how they manage the art of filtering the real world and the world of ideas, and shared avowed intentions into stories, characters, images—theatre. We all came into the group as experienced writers with our own voices, but when working with others who do what you do you can’t help comparing and contrasting; you admire, envy, and sometimes even pinch stuff, albeit unconsciously. I want a bit of that, you think. I want Patricia’s easy, lyrical, colloquial poetry. I want Christos’ morally confounding collisions between characters and ideas.' (Introduction)

Seven children wander the streets of Melbourne at night, while their mothers await their return.