Books published by Currency Press Pty Ltd

Gerry is a documentary filmmaker who, one day each year, follows five children around with a camera. He shows the results annually on television. Yet for the children who grow up under Gerry's (and the nation's) watchful eye, the experience creates its own dynamic. Are the participants his subjects, his children, or his creations? What responsibility does a storyteller have, to his subjects, his audience, and himself? How much does Gerry take? Does the presence of the camera distort the lives it is supposed to be capturing? Spanning more than twenty years, this play invites you into a world of fractured celebrity and distorted vision. (5 male, 4 female).

This play documents the cataclysmic Newcastle earthquake and its aftermath. Based entirely on taped interviews, this is the dramatic presentation of real oral history, as told by the staff and friends of the Newcastle Workers Club. In unvarnished tones, sometimes funny, sometimes terrified, they show the after-effects of the tragedy on the lives of ordinary people. (7 male, 9 female).

Hibberd has been called the most innovative Australian playwright of his generation. His early plays have endured the test of time and continue to be performed, studied and read for pleasure. White with Wire Wheels (1967) satirises a culture of masculinity expressed in cars, booze and work. Women are marginalised, trivialised and ultimately disposable. This provocative and unconventional comic play throws a spotlight on human and material values and a society that can tolerate the intolerable. Dimboola (1969) is expressively vulgar, bawdy and boisterous, it plays out the wedding reception from hell, with the audience active participants as guests. A Stretch of the Imagination (1972) introduces us to the painfully lonely world of Monk O''Neill, one of the great comic creations of Australian dramatic literature. Monk''s colourful, rambling monologue cuts to the quick of what Australia one was and what one day it could become. The resilient ironies of the play will not be lost on today''s generation.

Based on the true story of Alwyn Peter, a Queensland Aboriginal charged with murder in 1979; his case created legal precedent when he was released on parole after his lawyers argued that men, like Peter, were shaped and destroyed by their artificially created environments on Queensland reserves (2 acts, 3 men, 2 women).

Gary has failed in everything he has attempted. But when he inherits a block of land, he gets an urge to build a nest with Sue-Ann, his angry and pregnant girlfriend... This is a story about Aussie battlers -- battling with each other, the elements and the world in their quest to turn a dream into reality. What begins as satire becomes a moving drama told with humour, compassion and loving detail by a highly original and insightful playwright. (3 male, 2 female).

In Navigating we meet Bea, an embattled woman who finds herself in possession of damaging documentary evidence. The seaside town in which she and her sister live is riddled with corruption and buried secrets, as the forces once responsible for a holiday tragedy now conspire to win the contract for a private prison. Unwilling to recognise the fear and deceit around her Bea confides in one hollow friend after another. Her small world crumbles. Silence, she discovers, is as damaging as speech. A dense, powerful, witty human drama which goes to the heart of small-town politics and finds sources of unexpected wisdom. (3 men, 4 women).

Turnaround Creek, outback Australia, Boxing Day, 1945. The dust and inertia settle on the town as Harold Slocum of Slocum''s Travelling Tent Show becomes stranded in the town, emotions run high and the sedentary life of the town is distributed into wakefulness by the remembrance of an illicit affair. In this bittersweet musical, new life is breathed into the town with both humour and sensitivity. This is a lyrical story of rejuvenation and self-acceptance by acclaimed authors Nick Enright and Terence Clarke. (5 male, 7 female).

As protestors march against the war in Vietnam, boys in a Catholic school prepare for their final exams (4 men, 2 women).

Miss Tanaka is the beautiful and enigmatic niece of Broome''s former Number One pearl diver. Newly arrived from Japan, she captures the hearts of the town''s menfolk, but is promised in marriage to two brawling pearl divers. Who will uncover this mysterious young woman''s true identity? Based on a story by Xavier Herbert, John Romeril''s new play is a magical portrayal of 1930s Broome, weaving an astonishing blend of folk tale, magic and spectacle as it races to its wild conclusion.

This comedy of love and errors set on a single day, somewhere between Verona and jindyworobak, has entranced audiences for twenty years. This entertaining romp put an Australian spin on Goldoni's classic Italian farce (2 acts, 7 men, 3 women).

In a moment of glory at the 1968 Olympics, the four Amigos, an Australian rowing team, won a bronze medal. It was lifetime bond material. But 35 years later, only two of the four Amigos keep in touch. Jim is a banker, with money, an expensive house, and a young and beautiful wife. It seems he has it all, but his friend Dick, a heart surgeon, has something that Jim wants: a sterling reputation. The two mates, and their wives, meet up in Port Douglas with competing personal agendas. And then a Steven, the third amigo, turns up, ready to expose all about their past. And so the games begin... 'Amigos' is a savagely funny play that exposes the subtle violence and unacknowledged dependencies of male friendship -- and the angst and irritation it causes their wives. Here David Williamson, Australia's most popular and successful playwright, looks at what happens when mateship and mating collide. (2 acts, 3 male, 2 female).

In 1931 the authorities seized 14-year-old Molly Craig from her desert home in Jigalong, western Australia, with her younger sister Daisy and cousin Gracie. Official policy decreed that the three girls be taken to the Moore River Native Settlement, where they were to be trained as domestic servants. Their trauma was intensified by Moore River's harsh regime and Molly soon decided it was time to go home, to their mothers. And the only way home was to walk. The true story of the girls' 1600 kilometre journey back to Jigalong is now a major film directed by Phillip Noyce. (3 male, 6 female).