AustLit

'Actor, lyricist, gambler, plays a final game of cards with death, based on the colorful, dramatic life of one Greece’s most treasured poets and lyricists Eftihia Panagiannopoulou.' (Production summary)

'Goddess or a hot mess? 

'Dance, soul songs and live drumming take you to the mythical realm of the Orishas (gods), where a fated claim to be the goddess of love, femininity and sensuality hangs over young Oshun’s head. In Ile Ife, the spirit kingdom of the Yoruba (West Africa) people, all the Orishas have their domain. But young Oshun is yet to prove that what she does is even a thing. When Oggun, the god of metal and technology, flees leaving Ile Ife and Earth in darkness and chaos, Oshun feels it’s her chance to show what she’s capable of. 

'But can she really bring Oggun back for order to be restored? 

'Are her powers a force or a farce?'

Source: Production blurb.

'A startling, unsettling and hugely theatrical adaptation of Mary Shelley’s timeless classic, produced by award-winning playwright Christine Davey, Skin of our Teeth Productions and La Mama Theatre.

'A funny, thoughtful, horrific and remarkable story of love, power, friendship, betrayal and every emotion in between.

'Frankenstein is a larger-than-life (and death) production celebrating and unleashing the monster in all of us. A visceral piece of theatre that grabs at your heart and soul and never lets go.

'The future is female and here she comes, ready or not.' (Publication summary)

'Lenora’s star is fading plus she fears she’s losing her mind, since her mirror self has started talking back. Enter Charlie, an old admirer who offers her new hope and love. Standing in their way are Lenora’s controlling twin brother Marcus and his wife Wendy, who has her own agenda – and Mirror Woman just refuses to go away.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'Actor-documentary maker Lynne is making a film about homeless women.

'It’s an art doco, which intercuts real life characters with Lynne’s re-enactments of them. Her characters include a range of older women from all walks of life who find themselves without a home. Threaded into their stories is Lynne’s journey. As an artist living through a pandemic she faces her own financial crisis. Supported by city soundscapes this is a reading of an early draft of ‘Way’ to assist the development of future drafts towards a production outcome.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'The least cryptic thing uttered by Mao Zedong -”Women hold up half the sky”- was inspiration to Peter Green for this 50 minute performance in text, music and lyrics.

'The factors which enliven relationships between creative individuals and influence their professional output is complex; saturated with competing desires, dynamic tensions and impassioned acts. Throughout history, womens’ contributions have too often been sidelined; obscured by their partners’ achievements. This is the lot inhabited by couples such as Jenny von Westphalen and Karl Marx, Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and 3 husbands, and Ella Viola Strom and Percy Grainger. Their stories are explored in ‘Our Half of the Sky’.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Last Illuminations explores the extent to which we can live within our imagination and memory through focussing on a public servant who is experiencing something like visions.

'His consciousness is rendered through two characters, the older OFFICER looking back on his former life and how he came to experience visions and the YOUNG OFFICER, who is not just the version of himself that he wants to encounter in his memories but also, at times, the embodiment of his doubts about what he has experienced and ultimately who he is.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'She Wrote The Letter is a play based on the unlikely real friendship of two teenagers – Ute from East Germany and Tania from New Zealand. Drawn from a 30 year correspondence starting as pen pals in 1979, their letters affectionately map their navigation of the difficult East-West divide. Despite all that should divide them, their connection grows and strengthens and ends up taking them places they never suspected it could.

'A fascinating, funny, joyous and heart-warming new Australian play.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'“Six months and then my temporary working visa expires. Half a year to achieve my quest to have my engineering degree recognised by the Australian government, to become wealthy, to be able to bring my abandoned family here to this bloody country – I Am No Closer To Achieving My Goal Than The Day I Arrived Six Months Ago…”

'Cultures clash, friendships are formed, lovers meet, ambitions are foiled, abalones are eaten, in this hugely entertaining adaptation of Cher Chidzey’s novel by award winning theatre maker Adam Cass.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'What kind of people brought about Federation? Who was it that created Australia as a nation? Idealistic, complex, and energetic, yet to some modern eyes, limited by the beliefs of their era. The cause they strove for, the dilemmas they faced, are strongly relevant today, in a time of concern about globalisation, race, social inequality and national division. This richly textured and extensively researched play presents the complex vision and political, personal and spiritual life of Alfred Deakin, often called this country’s greatest Prime Minister.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'POINT8SIX* is an urgent, humanist comedy epic about life, the universe, philosophy, the Cold War, Berlin, espionage, the future, the past, revisionism, radio, consolidated power, ruthlessness, appropriation, limitless rage, the infinite quantum sheet and the eternal murder of the moment.

'Unabashed and completely mad, a formidable romp in Absurdia.

'*.86 seconds – the average time it takes a heart to beat.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'Ella Grainger recalls her journey through music at the side of her husband, internationally renowned composer and pianist, Percy Grainger.

'Grainger at Home, takes you into the private and creative life of Australian composer, Percy Grainger. His wife, poet and artist Ella, shares stories of their life together and touches on more than a few simmering issues in the Grainger saga. The music, presented in this semi-staged recital, will be performed by the Clinch Saxophone Quartet and includes world premiere arrangements of Grainger’s music and as well as the lovely, though rarely heard, “Five Settings of Ella Grainger”.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'The untold story of Ned Kelly’s remarkable sister Kate, tragic and heroic.

'Fire in the Head is contemporary spoken word in a bold, moving tale set deep in the Australian landscape showing Kate Kelly investigating hers and others lives in a haunting and lyrical style. She meets her own death in the shape of a young man.

'Fire in the Head is very relevant today- the project explores contemporary issues such as violence against women, and disparity of justice which are embedded in her volatile and intriguing story.

'It also challenges the masculine perspective of the Kelly story, that only her notorious brothers were significant players in the legend.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'A woman rehearses her mother’s funeral oration. A potted history of a difficult relationship. But is it truthful? What has been omitted? What has been varnished? In the minutes before the public eulogy, the woman’s psyche seeks clarity. In doing so, she faces the spectre of her mother. Was the relationship so malignant? Was the family unit so ruptured by lost ambition and betrayal? Might anything be salvaged? Will these be the right words on the day?'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'A coming-of-age birthday party. The threat of an approaching bushfire. A deeply held family secret.

'It’s the 7th of February 2009 – forever known in Australia’s history as ‘Black Saturday.’ It’s also Tom Robinson’s 18th Birthday. But tensions start to rise between Tom and his older brother Matthew, along with the temperature outside, and before the ice-cream cake has time to melt a deeply held family secret is revealed.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'When a wandering writer drifts back to an Indian guest house he has known for decades, he confronts his past, people from it, and finally himself. Written on an Asialink India literature residency, direct from a sold-out Adelaide season, award-winning writer and actor, Stephen House, presents, “The Ajoona Guest House”. Following his nationally acclaimed, “Appalling Behaviour” & “Almost Face to Face”, this latest monologue, opens the door on a dangerously beautiful, hidden New Delhi world.' (Production summary)

'Marvellous is a play about the everyday lives and extravagant, sometimes fantastical inner lives of two nonagenarian women and their 60+ plus daughters.

'Marvellous inter-weaves the voices and psycho-physicalities of elderly mothers and their daughters: their connectedness, their failing/falling bodies, their wayward memories and inventions.

'There is loss here – of control of faculties, of mental capacity, of bodily functions, of beauty – and a dark physical comedy is discovered in the changing shape of relationships between mother and daughter. There is also tenderness, and compassion for the ordinary pain of our lives together and in the cherished and lovingly curated archives of our human bodies in decline.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'A surreal, darkly funny play about an outer suburban autistic family and their technicolour brain explosions as they struggle to communicate and connect with one another.

'Breeders is a play about our world, where autistic children are considered problematic nightmares, and dodgy anti-vaccine ‘doctors’ become God-like saviours.

'Jumping between naturalism, satire and surrealism, this is today’s Melbourne through the acerbic eyes of Anna, a young autistic woman and budding journalist.

'Between domestic disputes, Anna’s family is confronted by media coverage about their lives in which they have no say.

'That is, until the media is hijacked by “problematic nightmare children.”

'Written by a neurodivergent artist and performed by predominantly neurodivergent actors, Breeders takes aim at the violent myths hurled at parents of autistic children which are much scarier than having a disabled child.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'This is a song for Garcia Lorca
Who; like many who looked
For a future but were 
Murdered by the past

'On Tuesday night 18th August 1936 Frederico del Sagrado Corazon Jesus Garcia Lorca better known as Garcia Lorca was taken by a Francoist death squad from the house of a friend in Granada; driven to a field near the farm called Cortijo de Gazpacho and shot dead. His remains are still await exhumation; like 114,266 other Republicans dead. GAZPACHO takes up an oral history story from later in the Civil War of four Republican prisoners awaiting their last dawn.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.

'On the brink of artistic discovery, Michel’s plans for the future are interrupted by a diagnosis of schizophrenia – he must rely on his sister – yet Karen has dreams of her own, how long can she push them aside to care for him?

Drawn from the writer’s lived experience of schizophrenia, this powerful play explores the relationship between siblings who grapple with managing this condition, which interrupts their focus on transforming the world through art. 

'Michel is writing his first novel, Hipflask, his older sister Karen is in Europe turning the world into paintings. Michel’s letters take a strange turn. He believes Joan Miro and Franz Kafka are his companions and he can speak with them. His sister Karen rushes home. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Michel is unable to accept it. Karen becomes her brother’s career, which tests but cannot destroy their strong bond.'

Source: La Mama Theatre.