Historical plays

Babes in the Wood
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$18.95 inc GST

Babes in the Wood

Tom Wright
Once upon a time, two children wander too far from home. They meet a colourful caravanserai of colonial pantomimics and are caught up in the hysterical performance of truculent and disreputable tales—tales to give a nation nightmares. Wright has hunted through our rich heritage of original Australian pantomimes to create this triumph of rhyme over reason. The result is part salute to a lost tradition, part banner to the future.
Cast : 3M, 4F
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-709-8 | PB
Bali: Adat
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$21.95 inc GST

Bali: Adat

Graham Sheil
Set in Bali at the time of Dutch rule, the play shows how the conflict between Christianity and Hinduism led to defeat and victory on both sides. Includes English and Indonesian text.
Cast : 7M, 1F
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-240-6 | PB
Burke's Company
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$32.95 inc GST

Burke's Company

Bill Reed
Burke's Company is a 'play of disillusion', writes Katharine Brisbane, which looks at 'the blindness of European exploiters like Robert O'Hara Burke who failed to manage his company or listen to their voices; and refused to acknowledge the Aborigines' offers of salvation. Burke's dream is to conquer the land, by traversing it from south to north. He wants their exploits gloriously recorded in Wills' writings. A play about class—in this case the moneyed class—for whom discipline is a tool of survival not always placed in the safest hands.'

Published in Plays of the 60s Volume 3

Cast : 9M
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-562-9 | PB
Jane My Love
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$32.95 inc GST

Jane My Love

Catherine Shepherd

Sir John Franklin, governor of Tasmania and his wife, Jane, are passionately in love. They are determined to dramatically change the colonial outpost, from which Sir Franklin is later dismissed. Was Jane the real reason Franklin’s reforms were rejected?

Published in Tremendous Worlds: Australian Women's Drama 1890–1960.

Cast : 12M, 10F
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-576-6 | PB
Robbery Under Arms
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$21.95 inc GST

Robbery Under Arms

Alfred Dampier
This lively melodrama, adapted from the novel by Rolf Bolderwood, was a huge success in 1895 and played to enthusiastic audiences for some fifteen years thereafter. Edited by Richard Fotheringham and published with Australasian Drama Studies.
Cast : 18M, 7F, plus extras
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-137-9 | PB
Shipwreck
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Shipwreck

Douglas Stewart

Stewart, best known as a poet, was also a masterful verse dramatist. His 1951 play  Shipwreck recreates the infamous mutiny that occurred after the Dutch ship Batavia foundered off the northwest Australian coast in 1629. It is a complex and literary play which depicts with sympathy the anarchic mutineers Cornelius, Huyssen and Seevanck.

Published in Plays of the 50s Volume 1

Cast : 10M, 5F
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-627-5 | PB
The Storm or The Howler
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$28.95 inc GST

The Storm or The Howler

An Appalling Mistranslation by Peter Oswald of a Roman Comedy by Plautus

Peter Oswald

Oberon Books | 978-1-840025-85-9 | PB