Plays of the 60s - Volume 2

History, identity and racial attitudes reflect a growing diversity of opinion; but distinctive in this volume, argues Brisbane, 'is the sudden and spontaneous elevation of language'

In these few years a truly local form of contemporary theatre began to make itself felt. Included here are -

This Old Man Comes Rolling Home ~ Dorothy Hewett

A play centred on family life in working-class Redfern in the 1950s which captures the colour, spirit and political character of the inner-city suburb

Hewett who lived in Redfern during the Cold War, wrote that her aim was 'to write of a self-contained world ... with its own language, its own folklore, its own values, its own ethos, to write of it with both realism and poetry'

The Lucky Streak ~ James Searle

An exploration of the rhythms of the inarticulate, and the aggression, rooted in frustration, which can be present in the simplest of domestic conversations

Norm and Ahmed ~ Alex Buzo

A rather ocker, white Australian male encounters a well-mannered Pakistani student with revolutionary ambitions in a Sydney park at midnight

Buzo creates an image of race prejudice as a profoundly irrational force in the behaviour of ordinary Australians

Private Yuk Objects ~ Alan Hopgood

A rich portrait of Australia in the mid-1960s where, in the 1966 federal election,conscription and the Vietnam War were the major public issues

This Old Man Comes Rolling Home - 9M, 9F (doubling possible) / The Lucky Streak - 3M, 2F / Norm & Ahmed - 2M / Private Yuk Objects - 10M, 3F