doollee banner
The Playwrights Database
contact doollee


Margaret Davis

MARGARET DAVIS

  
Nationality:    Australian
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Margaret Davis is a writer for both theatre and film. Her plays include mainstage, physical theatre and plays for young audiences. Margaret also has had extensive experience as a theatre director, including premiere productions of seminal Australian plays. Her plays The Monk, Spilling Bodies and Women through the Windows were staged by her own company, Two Planks and a Passion. Other plays include The Woman on the Twenty Dollar Note, Mad Before Mid-Day, Unspeakable Acts and the short plays Black Iris and Tattoo You. Margaret has recently completed her first screenplay, Trick of the Light, and is working on a second, In the Pink, as well as a new stage play, Shearwater. Margaret is the recipient of the Fay Mokotow Memorial Award, a Varuna Writer's Fellowship and an AWGIE nomination. She has received Australia Council funding for both development and production of her work. Three of her works have been completed as commissions and she has also been included in development programs with ANPC and Playworks. Margaret has lectured at the University of Western Sydney and the University of Wollongong and is currently lecturing part time in Film and Theatre in the BA in Performance at AADA. She also works as a freelance script assessor and dramaturg.

Buy Plays with Doollee

Each page of doollee.com has links to play/book outlets, either directly to the Publisher, through Stageplays.com and Amazon to the second hand and 1st editions of AbeBooks. These links will automatically take you to the relevant area obviating the need for further search.
AbeBooks.co.uk   AbeBooks.com   Stageplays.com   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.ca
whether you are a Playwright who wishes to make their entry definitive, an unlisted Playwright or a User with a tale to tell - we want to hear from you.
download WORD submission template

below is a list of Margaret Davis's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Forging Ahead         Isis Dreaming         Mad Before Midday         Monk, The         Spilling Bodies         Unspeakable Acts         Woman On the Twenty Dollar Note, The         Women Through the Windows, The
Forging Ahead

Synopsis:
In 1818, Tova Wolynski arrives in Sydney to join her brother, a ticket-of-leave convict. She is alarmed at his efforts to get ahead, which include changing his name and ditching all connections with his Polish/Jewish heritage. In 2001, Holocaust survivor Lila Wolynski laments the current heartlessness of her adopted homeland. Her daughter Ania laments the loss of her Jewish heritage but Lila devotes her energy to helping Afghani asylum seekers, Rahila and Zakir. Lila's granddaughter Stell wants to make a difference, and with boyfriend Josh embarks on an identity theft scam aimed at exposing social inequality. They recruit 13-year-old Cambodian-born Dante, an ace hacker. His adoptive father Larry becomes their prime target.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
epic dram 110 min

Parts:
Male:  10            Female:  8            Other:  doubling possible

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Isis Dreaming

Synopsis:
All the performers need to have strong movement/dance skills. Based on the ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. The journey of Isis becomes the dream journey of Everywoman in which she encounters both her dark and her creative impulses. The journey is sometimes nightmarish, sometimes comic and often extremely erotic.

Notes:
Original music by Deborah Bookbinder. A very physical piece combining text And choreographed movement

1st Produced:
-     1991

Organisations:
Performing Lines

1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 80 mins surrealism

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Mad Before Midday

Synopsis:
the story of three sisters and their isolated upbringing during the First World War. More adept at building fantasies than confronting reality, their lives are shattered when they marry men irretrievably damaged by their war experiences.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-     2002

Organisations:
New Theatre

1st Published:

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 90 mins Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Monk, The

Synopsis:
an adaptation of the notorious 1798 Gothic horror novel by Matthew Lewis - scurrilous happenings within Convent walls, doughty knights battle to rescue wronged heroines, the seduction of the spotless Monk by the Devil disguised as the Madonna

Notes:
Because of its length, this piece would work best performed in two parts

1st Produced:
Unproduced    

Organisations:
Two Planks and a Passion

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 200 mins Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  5            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Spilling Bodies

Synopsis:
Spilling Bodies is all about falling. Falling in love, falling pregnant, falling from grace and falling apart, as well as the literal physical falls experienced from the cradle to the grave. The play interweaves the experiences of four central characters (and many others) in a combination of powerful text and movement scenario.

Notes:
a very physical work which needs performers skilled in movement. Although there were four performers in the original production it has been subsequently produced with 8 And 16.

1st Produced:
-     1997

Organisations:
Two Planks and a Passion

1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 100 mins Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Unspeakable Acts

Synopsis:
Zoe Jakubowicz is in Venice to launch her latest novel, which soon has the literary world buzzing. But in this watery city, nothing is ever truly as it seems - a confrontation with her past and a romantic entanglement in the present conspire to rock Zoe to the core of her being as a woman and a writer.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Unproduced    

Organisations:
Australian National Playwrights Centre development program

1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama/heightened naturalism 100 min

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Woman On the Twenty Dollar Note, The

Synopsis:
Based on the exploits of Mary Reibey, (nee Molly Haydock) who was transported to Australia in 1791 at the age of fourteen for horse stealing, but went on to become the colony's 'first lady of trade.' On the way she did a good camouflage job on her background. The play is about the struggle between conscience and necessity, cover up and survival.

Notes:
although written for two Actors this play could be performed by A larger cast.

1st Produced:
-     1996

Organisations:
ensemble Theatre

1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 100 mins Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Women Through the Windows, The

Synopsis:
Based on the stories of Irish immigrant girls who were brought to Australia after they lost everything in the Famine

Notes:
Commissioned As A site-specific work by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, but could be Adapted for in-theatre productions.

1st Produced:
-     1999

Organisations:
Hyde Park Barracks Museum

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Full-Length 100 mins Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page