AustLit

'In Darwin during WWI, ‘smoke social’ parties were staged to farewell enlisting soldiers. They featured Vaudeville routines, songs, poetry and brass bands. A Smoke Social, re-creates one of these parties, inviting audiences to participate as they did a hundred years ago in the original venue where these socials were staged – nowadays known as the ‘Town Hall Ruins’.

'A Smoke Social leaps ahead to the Palestinian front where two Darwin brothers – one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous – have been abandoned. One of the brothers falls in love with a Palestinian woman while the other despairs of ever being rescued. The play shifts seamlessly between Palestine and Darwin through the device of the ‘smoke social’ – the various routines and re-enactments reveal the brothers’ fate.

'Inspired by real events, A Smoke Social addresses global and ‘frontier’ wars, colonialism and brotherly love. In A Smoke Social, the political is always, and deeply, personal.'

Source: Brown's Mart Theatre.

'Darwin. 1942. A town collapses under the threat of invasion as war comes closer to Northern Australia. Mothers and daughters, sisters, friends, and entire cultures are torn apart by the secrets that start to fall. Is Mr Takahashi to blame?

'Japan unleashes a wave of attacks on Northern Australia, with particularly devastating effects on Darwin – the city being hit with more bombs than Pearl Harbor. Mr Takahashi examines the home front, focusing upon multicultural and Indigenous women whose lives were forever changed by the bombings of February 19. (Production summary)

'The Age of Bones (Jaman Belulang) is an Australian-Indonesian co-production about an Indonesian boy, Ikan, who goes fishing one day and fails to return.

'Assuming the worst, his parents hire a legendary seafarer to look for his corpse. He finds nothing. The Age of Bones traces what happened to Ikan – from the day he left, to his eventual imprisonment in Australia and his fight to return home.

'Darwin writer Sandra Thibodeaux was inspired by the real-life stories of around 60 Indonesian boys who were allegedly jailed in Australia for working on refugee boats.

'The Age of Bones is mostly set under the ocean in an underwater court, a fantastical piece realized through shadow puppets, video and music'.  (Production summary)

'Set in 1975, 'A Silence Not Like Sand' is a coming of age story. While on a family holiday in a beachside caravan park, 12-year-old Jane discovers her father's secret. In the background, the Cairns-Morosi affair is played out in the media.'

Source: ABC Radio National's website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn
Sighted: 17/12/2007