AustLit

'I grew up in a violent home. We kept this violence secret. I never told my school friends, we never told the relatives we were allowed to see, and in the cold light of a morning after, we barely mentioned it among ourselves.' (Introduction)

'‘Listen to Me’ is a collection of songs, words and music made in response to the current debate in Australia about gendered violence. It contains factual quotes, personal stories and originally commissioned lyrics by Donna Abela, Eunice Andrada, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Alison Croggon, Candy Royalle and Ania Walwicz, with Hilary Bell as the project dramaturg.' (Production summary)

'Aspiring archaeologist Lola left home when she was only 20, much to the shame of her traditional Jordanian mother. Six years later, losing sleep and petrified by the judgement of her visiting ‘mad Arab’ Aunty Azza, Lola is forced to lie about her life, her career and the existence of her Aussie partner. Worst of all is the fear that she’s also lying to herself.

'Looking deep into the heart of Sydney and beyond, 'Jump for Jordan' unpacks the experience common to countless second-generation Australians of being caught between two cultures. Sifting through shifting layers of past and present, farce and fantasy, it’s one woman’s mad, messy excavation of her own history, and her attempt to piece together the broken bits of her identity. ' (Source: Griffin Theatre website)

'Based on journal entries of Mrs Elizabeth Macquarie. She was the wife of Governor Macquarie who was the governor of New South Wales between 1810 and 1821. She took a particular interest in the welfare of women, convicts and the Indigenous peoples of the colony.'

Source: ABC Radio National's website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/
Sighted: 15/06/2009

Fathom is set underwater off Broome while an English deep-sea diver stages up to the surface to prevent diver's paralysis, or the bends. More specifically, the action takes place in the diver's fraying mind as he increasingly loses consciousness. It is 1913, and the White Australia Policy is tightening its grip. There are two worlds in this play; the profane and the sacred. The profane world is the one in which the diver's Malay tender is trying to stage him to the surface. It is a slow, suspended, lonely underwater world of counting, recounting and recriminating. There is also the sacred Otherworld in which a dragon appears, Oriental Sovereign of the Indian Ocean. This is the realm of pearl myths, magic and the unconscious, where linear attitudes to time do not apply, and things happen in defiance of natural laws and cycles.

Source, ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/airplay/s1481616.htm
Sighted: 22/11/2005

'"The Daphne Massacre" is a contemporary retelling of the Ancient Greek myth about Daphne, who gets turned into a Laurel tree, there are layers of inspiration behind "The Daphne Massacre". An anecdote read by Donna Abela suggested that before the wide use of Fluoride, women were urged to have their teeth removed so that they wouldn't ever become a financial or emotional burden on their families.'

(Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/airplay/s1375704.htm)
Sighted 22/06/2005