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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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Howard Brenton
A celebration of a great English heroine,
Anne Boleyn dramatises the life and legacy of Henry VIII’s notorious second wife, who helped change the course of the nation’s history.
Traditionally seen as either the pawn of an ambitious family manoeuvred into the King’s bed or as a predator manipulating her way to power, Anne – and her ghost – are seen in a very different light in Howard Brenton’s epic play.
Rummaging through the dead Queen Elizabeth’s possessions upon coming to the throne in 1603, King James I finds alarming evidence that Anne was a religious conspirator, in love with Henry VIII but also with the most dangerous ideas of her day. She comes alive for him, a brilliant but reckless young woman confident in her sexuality, whose marriage and death transformed England for ever.
Cast : 13M, 7F (larger cast possible)
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Nick Hern Books, UK | 978-1-84842-099-1 | Australia/NZ | PB
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$18.14 ex GST
$19.95 inc GST
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Currency Classics
Sophocles (adapted by Eamon Flack)
‘What a great piece of theatre! The adaptation by Eamon Flack retains the power of the original, while making it not so much up to date, as timeless.’
ArtsHub
Polyneices and Eteocles, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes’ civil war, have both been killed in battle. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles will be honoured and Polyneices disgraced. The rebel brother’s body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and will lay unburied to become the food of carrion animals. Defying Creon’s edict Antigone buries her brother and in so doing unleashes a terrible tragedy.
Antigone is part of a new series, CURRENCY CLASSICS, a series of Australian adaptations of classic plays.
To read an extract from
Antigone go to this PDF
CAST: 4F 4M
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-880-4 | PB
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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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Sue Smith
Bastard Boys
is the story of the fight that stopped the nation—the 1998 battle for Australia's waterfront. More than just a dispute over reform, it became a campaign for the hearts and minds of all Australians. Controversial, all-consuming and combative, it forced people to pick a side and fight for their beliefs. Political thriller, war film, buddy movie, love story and courtroom drama all rolled into one, this is the story of the people behind one of the most significant events in Australia's recent past.
Iconic Australian actors Jack Thompson and Colin Friels lead an outstanding cast that includes: Geoff Morrell, Dan Wyllie, Justine Clarke, Rhys Muldoon and Lucy Bell.
Bastard Boys has been written with the cooperation and participation of all parties to the dispute. It is the first time participants such as former Patrick CEO, Chris Corrigan and ACTU Secretary, Greg Combet have agreed to tell their stories.
Reviews:
There is so much praise to be heaped on Bastard Boys
, it’s hard to know where to begin. No, it’s not. Without Sue Smith’s extraordinary script, this unruly, octopusion true story could have been a confusing, boring polemic.
(…)
Smith’s script gives us the overview and the minute detail as well as some of the best big speeches we’ve ever heard on Australian television.
(…)
The world of the wharves, the boardrooms and war rooms are places most of us will never visit or understand. Bastard Boys
takes us there, makes sense and great drama all at once. It’s amazing.
Ruth Richie, Sydney Morning Herald
Sue Smith's script [is] ... a reminder of the sheer power of intelligent character-driven drama.
Graeme Blundell, Sydney Morning Herald
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-809-5 | PB
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$20.86 ex GST
$22.95 inc GST
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Nell Neyshon
Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name,
Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.
Nell Leyshon’s new play is an anarchic tale of madness and sanity, authority and incarceration and the arbitrary lines that separate them.
This violent, romantic reverie will make history when it becomes the first ever production by a female writer to be staged at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
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Oberon Books, UK | 978-1-84943-052-4 | Australia/NZ | PB
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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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Sebastian Faulks/adapted by Rachel Wagstaff
A beautiful terrible story about love, courage and the endurance of
the human spirit
Based on Sebastian Faulk's international best-selling novel,
Birdsong tells the story of one man's journey through an all consuming love affair and into the horror of the First World War.
While staying as the guest of a factory owner in pre-First World War France, Stephen Wraysford embarks on a passionate affair with Isabelle, the wife of his host. The affair changes them both for ever.
For the first time, this beautiful haunting story about love, courage and the endurance of the human spirit is brought to the stage in a version by Rachel Wagstaff.
'a brilliant theatrical filleting...' Micheal Coveney,
The Independent
Cast : 11M, 3F, doubling possible
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Oberon Books, UK | 978-1-84943-068-5 | Australia/NZ | PB
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$29.95 ex GST
$32.95 inc GST
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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 Performance Rights : Currency Press
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-562-9 | PB
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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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The play
Louis Nowra
Nowra’s vibrant play is set inside a psychiatric institution where Lewis, a university student, has been employed to direct a show. He becomes emotionally involved with his patients-cum-actors as his operatic production lurches forward and anti-Vietnam protests rage outside.
Winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Drama.
‘Nowra has written a terrific play about theatre, madness, illusion, sanity, life: it’s a big, splendidly Australian epic’ Frank Gauntlett,
Telegraph Mirror
‘Nowra’s generous humour ... offers up a world of the most extraordinary, ordinary people; and a hilarious situation-comedy, to boot’ Angela Bennie,
Sydney Morning Herald
Watch Barry Otto talk about
Cosi at the 2011 Texts in the City; the centrepiece of Melbourne's UNESCO City of Literature Initiative.
Cast : 5M, 3F
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-403-5 | PB
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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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Edmond Rostand
This unique adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic play
Cyrano de Bergerac is set in 1930s India, where Cyrano pursues his love for Roxanne in an Asian setting.
Translated by Ranjit Bolt; adapted by Jatinder Verma.
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Oberon Books | 978-1-89979-100-2 | AUSTRALIA/NZ | PB
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$29.95 ex GST
$32.95 inc GST
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Jonah, The Floating World, The Lost Weekend, Top End
John Romeril
This collection, introduced by John McCallum, includes three previously unpublished works:
Jonah, a Brechtian musical reinvention of Louis Stone's novel of the same name;
Top End, a political drama set in Darwin during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and
Lost Weekend which takes a class-based look at 'Australianess'. They are published together with Romeril's best-known play,
The Floating World, the story of a returned serviceman's descent into madness on a cruise ship bound for Japan.
Romeril's writing conveys the immediacy of the times that stems from his beginnings as an agitprop writer, but he focuses on everyday lives. The plays in
Damage explore the twentieth century stresses and strains, the damage we do and the damage done to us.
RESOURCES
WATCH
The Lost Repertoire - on remembering, recognising and rejoicing in our Australian theatrical repertoire.
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Currency Press | 978-0-86819-876-7 | PB
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$19.95 ex GST
$21.95 inc GST
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Nigel Planer
Based on the curious fact that the Scottish Presbyterian Robert Louis
Stevenson and the hedonistic Paul Gauguin both ended their days on the
South Sea Islands within a few years of each other, Nigel Planer’s play
compares and contrasts the very different, but oddly similar lives they
were living in their respective tropical paradises.
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Nick Hern | 978-1-84842-041-0 | PB
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