Not in Print: playwrights off script - on inspiration, process and theatre itself

’Australia in 50 Plays’: In conversation with Julian Meyrick

In this episode of Not in Print Caitlin speaks with Julian Meyrick. 

Julian Meyrick is Professor of Creative Industries at Griffith University and an Honorary Fellow at Deakin University. He has directed award-winning productions at Melbourne Theatre Company, Griffin, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Workers Theatre and Kick House Theatre and was Associate Director and Literary Advisor at Melbourne Theatre Company until 2007.

In this podcast Julian discusses his most recent book, 'Australia in 50 Plays', published by Currency Press and launched at the inaugural Australian Playwrights’ Festival in March this year.

Grab a copy of the book here: currency.com.au/books/history-and-criticism/australia-in-50-plays/

~~

Music by Grace Turner 

 

Andrea James: on collaboration, First Nations‘ storytelling and Sunshine Super Girl

In this episode, Caitlin spoke with playwright, director and dramaturg, Andrea James.

 

Andrea is a Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai woman who is dedicated to the telling of First Nations stories on stage.

She was Artistic Director of Melbourne Workers Theatre 2001-2008, was a playwright in residence at Melbourne Theatre Company and is currently an Associate Artist at Griffin Theatre Company. 

Andrea’s plays have appeared on stages across Australia and around the world. 

Here, we speak about her theatre practice, and her two most recent plays, Sunshine Super Girl, about Wiradjuri tennis champion Evonne Goolagong, and, Dogged, written in collaboration with Catherine Ryan.

 

***

Grab copies of Andrea's scripts here: https://tinyurl.com/axncm7a6

***

Music by Grace Turner.

 

'The law of sexual assault spins on the wrong axis': Suzie Miller on her play, Prima Facie

"Five years at law school,
eleven years of practice,
I have always believed.
Now I need to know that I was not mistaken."

---

In this episode we spoke with playwright Suzie Miller about her award winning play, Prima Facie.

Winner of the 2018 Griffin Award, Prima Facie is an indictment of the Australian legal system’s failure to provide reliable pathways to justice for women in rape, sexual assault or harassment cases. It’s a work of fiction, but one that could have been ripped from the headlines of any paper, any day of the week, so common you could cry.

Tessa is a criminal lawyer at the top of her game who knows the law permits no room for emotion.

To win, you just need to believe in the rules. And Tessa loves to win, even when defending clients accused of sexual assault.
Her court-ordained duty trumps her feminism. But when she finds herself on the other side of the bar, Tessa is forced into the shadows of doubt she’s so ruthlessly cast over other women.

Turning Sydney’s courts of law into a different kind of stage, Suzie Miller‘s (Sunset Strip, Caress/Ache) taut, rapid-fire and gripping one-woman show exposes the shortcomings of a patriarchal justice system where it’s her word against his.

***

Prima Facie will be showing again at Griffin Theatre, 23 June - 10 July 2021. Tickets here: https://tinyurl.com/4j8kd74x

Grab copies of the script here: https://tinyurl.com/5zdjzr2y

***

Music by Grace Turner.

Thank you to Sarah Easterman for reading the excerpts from the play for this episode. 

 

Fangirling over FANGIRLS with Yve Blake

"Tease us and hate us / but don't underestimate us..."

 

This month we spoke with Yve Blake, playwright, screenwriter and composer, and the creator of the hit musical FANGIRLS.

FANGIRLS is showing again at Sydney Festival 2021 before touring Australia, and you can now get the script through Currency Press.

The song in this episode is a track from FANGIRLS performed by some of the original 2019 cast, including Yve Blake, who played the role of Edna. 

Learn more about Yve and her work over at yveblake.co

 

'Counting and Cracking': in conversation with S. Shakthidharan

‘In Tamil we don’t say goodbye. Only, I will go and come back.’
‘நாங்கள் விடைபெறேக்க, ‘போயிட்டு வாறன்’ எண்டு மட்டும் தான் தமிழில சொல்லுறனாங்கள்.’

In this episode we speak with S. Shakthidharan, a writer, director, musician and producer of film and theatre who grew up in Western Sydney and has Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry. 

We discussed Shakthi's multi-award-winning, multilingual play, Counting and Cracking, which traverses countries and decades to bring us an epic tale of family, love and politics. 

See more of Shakthi's work at kurinji.com.au 

'For We The Young': Finegan Kruckemeyer on writing plays for children and young people

To re-launch Not in Print, we spoke with Finegan Kruckemeyer about magical worlds where monsters are friends and lighthouses are boats, and on the richness and dynamism of theatre for children and young people.

***

Finegan has had 94 commissioned plays performed on six continents and translated into eight languages. His work has enjoyed seasons in more than 200 international festivals and in 2018, he was the most-produced playwright of original children’s theatre in the US. 

He and his work have received 36 awards, including the Mickey Miners Lifetime Achievement Award for international Theatre for Young Audiences, David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Australian Playwrighting, seven Australian Writers' Guild Awards and an inaugural Sidney Myer Fellowship. Finegan has spoken at conferences in ten countries, with papers published and works studied at international universities.

Finegan was born in Ireland and moved halfway around the world to Adelaide, Australia, aged eight. After 15 years, he and his wife Essie left for the island state of Tasmania. And after 15 more, with their son Moe, they returned.

Finegan is committed to making strong and respectful work for children, which acknowledges them as astute audience members outside the plays, and worthy subjects within.

See more of Finegan's work at finegankruckemeyer.com

**

Currency Press has published four titles by Finegan, including one play collection; For We the Young, At Sea, Staring up, The Grumpiest Boy in the World and The Violent Outburst that Drew Me To You. Available at currency.com.au/books-tag/finegan-kruckemeyer/ 

 

 

War Crimes: How do you win the battle inside your head? l Award-winning Australian theatre

A powerful story of five disenfranchised young women who are fighting for respect, railing against authority and struggling to form an identity in a small town with limited opportunities. The relocation of an Iraqi refugee family to the town provokes a climate of hostility and tension that threatens to violently explode.

--

Angela Betzien is a multi-award winning writer and a founding member of independent theatre company Real TV; her work has toured widely across Australia and internationally. She is currently the Patrick White Fellow at Sydney Theatre Company and developing new plays for them, as well as Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir.

Angela’s play Children of the Black Skirt toured Australian schools for three years and won the 2005 Drama Victoria Award for Best Performance by a Theatre Company for Secondary Schools. Another work, Hoods, won the AWGIE Award for Theatre for Young Audiences in 2007 and the Richard Wherrett Award for Theatre for Young Audiences in the same year.

A Town Named War Boy

"We hit Cairo like a train!... Every dirty little alley, every dusty back room bar. The pyramids are marvellous, but I could spend the rest of my days quite happily in the arms of your temptation."

Inspired by The State Library of New South Wales' jaw-dropping collection of World War I diaries and letters, A Town Named War Boy explores both the events of war and the impact it has upon soldiers and their families. Written with insight, humour and sensitivity, Ross Mueller's moving play brings the ANZAC legend to life. 

An Ever Changing Idiom - Alana Valentine's response to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, by Ray Lawler

Alana Valentine reads her response to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler. It’s called An Ever-Changing Idiom and features in the Currency Press series, Cue the Chorus, in which an assortment of respected Australian playwrights respond to the work of their peers. You can download all the responses in the series from our website - currencypress.com.au

A little bit about Alana Valentine. She is one of Australia’s most renowned and respected writers. Valentine writes for the stage, screen, radio and multimedia projects, but is perhaps best known for her plays. She is well known for her rigorous use of research within the community she is writing about. Her work for the stage includes Run Rabbit Run, Parramatta Girls, Cyberbile, Ear to the Edge of Time and Comin’ Home Soon. She has received numerous awards, both in Australia and internationally.

Introduction to Brumby Innes and Bid Me to Love - Ric Throssel

Alana Valentine—one of Australia’s most renowned and respected playwrights, whose work includes Parramatta Girls, Eyes to the Floor, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, Grounded and Cyberbile—reads the preface to the double edition of Brumby Innes and Bid Me to Love, two plays written by another of Australia’s literary treasures, Katharine Susannah Prichard. The introduction was written by Prichard's son, Ric Throssell.

A little bit about Katharine Susannah Prichard

Prichard was born in Levuka, Fiji, where her father was editor of the Fiji Times. She matriculated from South Melbourne College and worked briefly as a governess. She later taught in Melbourne studying English literature at night.

In 1908 she travelled to London, working as a freelance journalist for the Melbourne Herald and, on her return, as the social editor of the Herald's women's page. In 1912 she left for England again to pursue a career as a writer and published two novels, The Pioneers and Windlestraws. She met the Australian Victoria Cross winner, Captain Hugo Throssell while away and in 1919 she married him and moved to Western Australia. Already a committed Communist in 1920, she was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. In 1922 her only son Ric Throssell was born. While she was on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1933 Hugo Throssell committed suicide.

From the 1920s until her death she lived at Greenmount, Western Australia, earning her living as a writer of novels, short stories and plays. Her novels include Black Opal; Working Bullocks; The Wild Oats of Han; Coonardoo; Haxby's Circus; Intimate Strangers; and the goldfields trilogy The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds. Prichard was a member of the Communist Party of Australia until her death, and her political concerns were reflected in most of her published work. Her novels were published throughout the world and translated into numerous languages. In 1951 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A few words about Brumby Innes and Bid Me to Love

Written in the 1920s, Brumby Innes confronts the turbulent relations between the sexes and the races in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is published with another Prichard play from the 1920s, Bid Me To Love which, by contrast, is set among the fashionable rich in the lush hills outside Perth.