Over three years, Australia's new writing theatre, Griffin Theatre Company, presented fourteen unique short plays across its mainstage season. Seen for one night only, The fates, Seasons and The Seven Needs were three play cycles provoked by the classical mythology of man's inescapable destiny, the seasonal patterns and Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs. Now , this eclectic and fascinating collection of ten minute plays by some of the country's most established and emerging playwrights becomes Short Circuit.

In 2002 , a young man rehearses for his first armed robbery on a bookstore in Newcastle. On the other side of the world, Chechen rebels hold seige of the Moscow Theatre, demanding liberation. One is a local, small time theft and the other an international political crisis, but both are born of a similar futility and powerlessness to be heard. Moving back and forth between Moscow and Newcastle, these real events are the basis for this exploration on what drives such acts of terror and the impact they hold on the victims.

Sidney can feel her career slipping down the plughole. No one loves a pop star when she's forty - not if she isn't Madonna or Kylie. So unless she wants to join the ranks of the has-beens on the casino circuit, she better get herself a hit. But what if she regains the whole world and still feels that something's missing? Baby hunger. Returning to the feisty mood of her hit The Female of the Species, Joanna Murray-Smith in Rockabye gives our self-involved, celebrity-obsessed culture a satirical duff-up.

John McCallum's new history explores the relationship between 20th century Australian drama and a developing concept of nation. The book focuses on the creative tension sparked by dueling impulses between nationalism and cosmopolitanism; and between artistic seriousness and larrikin populism. It explores issues such as the domineering influence of European high culture, the ongoing popularity of representational realism, the influence of popular theatrical forms, the ambivalence (between affection and aggression) of much Australian humour and satire, and the interaction between the personal and the political in drama. The strength of Belonging is its comprehensiveness. Anyone studying an Australian play will find it here in the context of the other works by its author or the time and place in which it was written. As well as a rundown of the major writers and their works, the book also investigates a number of lesser known plays and writers. This authoritative study of Australian drama gives an account of the relationship between our theatre and our sense of self while taking into account a broad range of influences that helped to shape both.

This is the story of three lost souls at the edge of Savage River - now just a dam, a mine and a ghost town in Tasmania's north-west. From a ramshackle hut by the water, Kingsley forages a living with his young son, Tiger. One night, Kingsley brings home a stranger, the beguiling Jude. Seemingly in trouble, disorientated and with a moral compass way out of whack, she unwittingly changes three lives overnight. Jude soon settles into a routine that is far from her own and let history slip by. History does, though, have a habit of catching up with you.

Funny, disturbing and bittersweet, The Call is an enthralling drama about a young man looking to escape a suburban life. Gary stares into the eyes of a chook. After laying twenty thousand eggs and spending an entire life inside a tiny cage, she's facing the chop. Gary has had a confined life too - most of it spent looking for girls, stealing cars and wagging school. Now it's become a succession of dull, dirty and dangerous jobs. But Gary yearns for something that can make sense of life for him - give it meaning. He hears the call. One that roars inside him. A call of the wild, a call to arms, a call to prayer, a call of adventure. . .

Ruben Guthrie is on fire. He's 29, he's the Creative Director of a cutting-edge advertising agency, he's engaged to a Czech supermodel and Sydney is his oyster. He pours himself a drink to celebrate, a drink to work, a drink to sleep and one spectacular night he drinks so much he thinks he can fly. Ruben Guthrie is Brendan Cowell's brutally honest comedy about spiralling high, crashing hard and being taken to AA by your mum.

"Hope is an icicle. If it drops from a height, it can pierce a hole right through you." Londoner Edith Middleton arrives in Sydney in the grip of the Depression and watches her last penny roll down the drain of that great wishing well, Australia. As her life pitches into abject poverty, she bears an illegitimate child on a sweatshop floor, a gifted boy who drags his reluctant mother through the hole in his heart to discover love that is at once fragile and cruel.The Wishing Well is a feisty, powerful and uplifting story of resilience and love, told seductively with a wealth of actor-power, passion, vivacity and warmth.

It is no use, but William gives Isobel ninety minutes anyway. They were once married, but something happened. Something broke deep down in the mechanism of their lives together and, seeing no way to repair it, they threw it away. But perhaps they were too hasty. Perhaps there was something they could have done. Isabel just wants ninety minutes. Soon William will be married again, so ninety is all she has to make her case. Ninety to remember what they had. Ninety to regain what was lost. Just ninety to rediscover love or call it a day, forever.

Jeremy Glass is an untroubled little boy until his seventh birthday, when he suddenly announces that he is really a grown man called Danny, who died some years before. How can his parents indulge his conviction that he must find his real family? And how can his eerie insistence on his true identity not resurrect painful memories for Danny's widow? With songs from Tim Finn adding expressionistic commentary on the action, Matt Cameron's Poor Boy delivers a supernatural story steeped in loss, anguish and redemption.

A holiday. A time for conversation and distraction, a time to wind down and to dream. . .In a moment of relaxation and quiet reflection, two men unwittingly engage. Spontaneous, unaffected and thrillingly real, innocent discussion becomes an exploration of private fantasy, hidden anxiety, personal mythology and the most inexplicable behaviour. What lies behind the most unconscious gesture? How do power struggles play out in the politest of exchanges? Is there hope in the blank spaces between strangers? An extraordinary blend of performance, humour, sound, video installation and baroque song, Holiday is theatre at its most inspirational.

Meet Ed Kennedy - underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he's hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first Ace arrives. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. . .Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission? The Messenger is a darkly humorous, thought provoking and moving story that reminds us how difficult it is to find our place in the world.

high-life political comedy from 1912 in which the forces of socialism, feminism and conservatism fight out an election and an engagement to marry

The wheels in the gravel driveway. The door. Him coming home. I was waiting because I hadn't seen him in a long time. I hadn't been alone with him in so long. . . After a decade under siege a city has finally fallen. But ten years of rage have taken their toll. For an officer returning from this epic overseas campaign, it is time to put the horrors of battle behind him, and to take back his place at the family table. For the officer's wife, it is time to take her revenge. . . Tom Holloway's 'epic-in-miniature' is inspired by Aeschylus' Agamemnon and a truly contemporary Australian landscape - with breathtaking results.

What happens when one person's culture is another's crime? Ten years ago in north-eastern Laos, Klaudia ran out on Hayden. Now they meet up again when Hayden needs an anthropologist to be his expert witness in the trial of Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua recognise, in Chan's confused signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity

One of the seminal films of the 1970s, Alvin Purple depicts Alvin's struggles with his irresistibility to women - from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The 'definitive ocker comedy', Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s. Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.

Every year, a tiny group of unique individuals give up a regular lifestyle to begin an extraordinary undertaking. Banding together, they are recruited to bring relief to the world's trouble spots. Delivering humanitarian or medical aid, they offer hope to those living on the edge of human tolerance . . . well, at least, that's what they signed up for. Damien Millar explores the intentions, adversities and fears of Australians on the front line. Revealing personal stories with a compassionate eye and a gallows humour, he offers a compelling, practical perspective on international aid. The Modern International Dead is 'witness theatre' at its most potent - the insiders' view on global change today, and the world we hope for tomorrow.

Saturn has returned, and a moment of doubt changes everything. The universe conspires against Matt and Zara, and Zara is jettisoned into orbit. Sex on drugs has become sordid, but the allure of the threesome is still tempting. The prospect of having children is no longer odious, but mortgages and responsibility remain objects of contempt. It's time for lock down. But who's playing? Shifting perspectives on identity and Tommy Murphy's trademark comic flair combine to create a lively theatre of insight and ingenuity.

ANNIE is on trial for the murder of her babies and is being defended by STEFFIE a black childless lawyer. Conviction depends on Prof. LAWRENCE TAYLOR's testimony.