Independent Brisbane: Four Plays

These four plays represent some of the new work that has emerged from the independent theatre scene in Brisbane across the last ten years.

Each play is distinctive - from the vivid and tender devised ensemble piece about PL Travers The Knowing of Mary Poppins to the bleak world of child soldiers in Harriers, the Patsy Cline haunted confrontation of Post Office Rose and the quirky and poignant coming of age in Magda's Fascination with Wax Cats. Yet they carry with them what is characteristic of the city they come from -- a preoccupation with landscape, creation in tightly knit collaborative teams and brave, unexpected theatrical choices. Enjoy.


The Knowing of Mary Poppins
by Marcel Dorney and Leah Mercer

Takes a unique and magical journey into the life and imagination of P.L. Travers; the Queensland-born writer of Mary Poppins. Travers herself was as contradictory as her heroine and lived her life in a way that propelled her from one extreme to another. Follow her story and encounter a foray of characters and a magical ‘handbag’ full of tricks.


Harriers
by Marcel Dorney

Sayn is an Australian doctor in a war zone. She has been rescued from an explosion by a young soldier, Bir. Bir is seventeen and has been a child soldier since he was eleven. He has saved her because she is a doctor, but if he finds she is an American spy, he’ll have no hesitation in blowing her head off.

Harriers explores Australia’s involvement in other countries, training militia and providing arms and then abandoning the rebel forces we’ve trained, leaving them to be decimated to decimate others.


Post Office Rose
by Linda Hassall

Post Office Rose is the name of a terrible Patsy Cline cover band. Now the members are all grown up, and they have some serious scores to settle with one another. Set in a rural township, three women reunite who are as tough as the pigslaughtering landscape in which they grew up.

Not for the faint-hearted. Gripping, visceral, shocking and twisted.


Magda's Fascination With Wax Cats
by Maxine Mellor

Magda wears glasses, has tree-trunk legs and has a bull-bar on her teeth. Everyone that knows her calls her ‘Mong’, including her family. Her only friend is a dead cat. But amidst her introverted state and obscure imaginings, Magda is hoarding a very, very dark secret. Magda’s lyrical prose takes us deeper into the twisted life and psychology of someone who is ‘too dead to stop it/ too alive to stop it’ with extraordinary effect.

APT