The Playwrights Database
ALMA DE GROEN
(1941 - )
Nationality:
New Zealander
email:
n/a
Website:
n/a
Literary Agent:
RGM Artist Group
Alma De Groen was born in New Zealand in 1941 and moved to Australia at the age of twenty-four. De Groen is the author of many plays, of which the Rivers of China is probably the best known. It won the Premier's Literary award for Drama in both New South Wales and VictoriA. In 1998 De Groen became the first playwright to receive the Patrick White Literary award for her contribution to Australian Theatre. Other plays published by Currency are the Girl Who Saw everything, Going Home, the Joss Adams Show, Vocations, Wicked Sisters and the Woman in the Window.
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After-Life Of Arthur Cravan, The
Synopsis:
the story of Arthur Craven - Oscar Wilde's nephew - poet and boxer
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Canberra, Canberra, ACT
04 Mar 1973
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 14 Female: 1 Other: doubling possible
Further Reference:
Script in the Hanger Collection, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Australia. http://www.austlit.edu.au, http://www.austlit.edu.au >>>,
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Available Light
Synopsis:
Rose's daughter Mary speaks from within a nursing home for the mentally ill. Whilst in egypt, she entered a tomb that had not been opened in 4000 years and had an experience she can't rationally explain. Believing that her art can pass beyond the reality observed with the human eye, Rose hits the wall - literally - in her photography, and begins to question her entire existence
Notes:
can be played with Invisible Sun As single play
1st Produced:
Abc
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
Published, 1993
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
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Genre:
Radio Play
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Chidley
Synopsis:
examines the life of Australia's tragic eccentric William James Chidley and his attempts to reform Australian dress, diet, lifestyle and attitudes to sexual intercourse. Considered deranged because he refused to stop publishing and preaching his ideas on sexual practices and other matters relating to health, he was incarcerated in Callan Park where he committed suicide in 1916 at the age of fifty-six. Chidley's vision rises above his flawed theories. He is gifted with moments of metaphysical perception in which he seems to transcend the material world, and these glimpses of something beyond ordinary reality mean everything to him.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Grant Street Theatre, Melbourne
1976
Organisations:
Melbourne Theatre Company
1st Published:
in "Theatre Australia", January, Sydney, 1977
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
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 1 Other: doubling possible
Further Reference:
-
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Girl Who Saw Everything, The
Liz Ransom, a forty-seven year old feminist historian, publishes a controversial social history of women which attributes their suppression to biological determinism. Trying to escape the furore she has created, Liz retreats to a cottage in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Her husband Gaz, driving to join her, stops to help a terrified young woman by the roadside and is horrified when she is suddenly run down by another car. the girl had been multiply raped. Gaz becomes obsessed with her, and is shocked by his own behaviour when he develops a relationship with Carol, the driver of the car that killed the Girl. the predicaments of Liz and Gaz are contrasted with the opportunistic philosophies of their artist friend Saul, and the unexpected wisdom of his flippant young partner, edwina. the foundering marriage of Liz and Gaz reaches a reconciliation.perhaps under the steady gaze of the dead Girl, who Carol and Gaz believe is watching everything that happens.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Russell Street Theatre, Melbourne
11 Nov 1991
Organisations:
Melbourne Theatre Company
1st Published:
Sydney : Currency Press, 1993
Music:
-
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Genre:
Thriller
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Going Home
Poignantly examines the domestic confusions of Australian artists abroad.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
St Martins Theatre, South Yarra, VIC
11 Mar 1976
Organisations:
Melbourne Theatre Company
1st Published:
in "Going Home and other Plays", Currency Press, Sydney, 1977
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
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Invisible Sun
Synopsis:
Rose Shelley has fallen into a pit of total meaning after hailing a taxi on a rainy night and coming in contact with a new age cult. She explains to a dismayed audience of academics at a literary lunch that now that she has the dazzling benefits of "Spontaneous Divination" to explain the tragedies of the world around her, she is no longer a poet.
Notes:
can be played with Available Light As single play
1st Produced:
Upstairs Theatre, Townsville
1994
Organisations:
Belle Tournure Theatre Collective, Townsville
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
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Genre:
One act
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Joss Adams Show, The
the bicentennial celebrations in 1970 of the arrival of Captain James Cook aroused a new interest in Australia's history and culture. the plays in this volume were landmarks in the development of a rough new all-Australian theatre which celebrated the rude colour of Australian language and mores. It was a period of comedy and satire; but as these plays show, beneath the larrikinism was a sharp social criticism at work which saw ordinary people living alienated, exploitative and largely unexamined lives.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Stratford Shakespearean Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario
1970
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
in "Going Home and other Plays", Currency Press, Sydney, 1977
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
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Genre:
One act
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Perfectly All Right
Synopsis:
a one-act play imaging the frustration of Viv, a housewife whose life is limited to domestic activities and who tries to make her life meaningful by constantly rearranging the furniture in an obsessive-compulsive manner. the arrival of a young visitor, Len, provokes a crisis.Influenced by Pop art, minimalism and Claes Oldenberg's ideas of giving equal weight to people and objects in a theatrical performance.
Notes:
This is A one Act version of "the Sweatproof Boy"
1st Produced:
Sheridan Theatre, North Adelaide, SA
15 May 1973
Organisations:
Theatre Go Round
1st Published:
in "Going Home and other Plays", Currency Press, Sydney, 1977
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
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Genre:
Play One act
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Rivers Of China, The
In the early 1920's, the writer Katherine Mansfield (Prelude, Bliss, the Garden Party) travelled to the compound of Guru G. I. Gurdjieff at Fontainebleu in France, hoping that he might "cure her soul" before she died of Tuberculosis. In present day Sydney, a young man awakes in a hospital to find a dystopic world dominated by women. as each protagonist struggles to discover their true identity, the stories interweave in an unconventionally structured narrative. the play uses carefully plotted juxtapositions to depict a lone woman's spiritual journey through psychological territory that (traditionally) is only confronted with a male guide.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
The Wharf Theatre, Walsh Bay, NSW
09 Sep 1987
Organisations:
Sydney Theatre Company
1st Published:
in Australian plays, Currency Press, Sydney
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
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 3 Other: doubling
Further Reference:
-
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Sweatproof Boy, The
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Nimrod Street Theatre, Darlinghurst, NSW
1972
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
John McCallum, Belonging, Currency Press, Sydney, 2009
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
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Genre:
3 acts Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
Script in the Hanger Collection, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Australia. http://www.austlit.edu.au, http://www.austlit.edu.au >>>, 1968
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Vocations
a comedy of coupledom in which two talented women - Vicki, an actress, and Joy, a writer - seesaw between professional achievement and domestic conditioning as their men, in two very different ways, compete for newly assigned domestic roles. Challenges the notion that there are some vocations appropriate to one gender and not to another, and explores issues such as marriage and dependency, child-bearing and parenting, belief and integrity in one's vocation, the relationship between life and art, the silencing and suppression of women, and nuclear and other environmental threats to the planet.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Australian National University, Acton, ACT
May 1981
Organisations:
National Playwrights Conference
1st Published:
Currency Press, Sydney, 1983
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
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Genre:
comedy
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 3 Other: doubling
Further Reference:
-
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Wicked Sisters
the latest comedy/Drama from eminent Australian playwright alma De Groen brings together Meridee, Judith, Lydia and Hester; four old friends reunited at Meridee's house in the Blue Mountains after the death of her genius husband alec. the "fifty-something" women discuss the paths their lives have taken; divorces, lovers, dementia. . . Meridee describes alec's inexorable descent into alzheimer's disease, and confronts her friends with the astonishing secrets alec divulged in his decline. Wicked Sisters explores the harsh realities of relationships, and the strengths and weaknesses of four wise (but vulnerable) mature women. This is a witty and honest play with female characters in their fifties, which flirts with but defies stereotypes, and is filled with delicious revelations.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Stables Theatre, Darlinghurst, NSW
11 Apr 2002
Organisations:
Griffin Theatre Company,
1st Published:
Currency Press, Australia, Dec 2003
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
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Genre:
Full-Length 100 mins Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: 4 Other: (in their mid-fifties)
Further Reference:
-
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Wildheart
Synopsis:
This exploration and contrast of animal and human behaviour...Wildheart is a physical explosion of passion and drama.
Notes:
Composer: Ken Francis. Dvised by Alma De Groen and Nigel Jamieson
1st Produced:
Wharf 2 Theatre, Walsh Bay, NSW
06 Dec 1994
Organisations:
Legs On the Wall
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:
Play Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Woman In the Window,the
In Stalin's Russia, the great poet anna ahkmatova is forbidden to write. Her work is memorised by women friends who for thirty years have risked their lives to preserve her words. In a future, sterile world, where individual creativity is not seen as economically viable, the poetry archives are seldom accessed any more and are about to be switched off. Rachel, a young Australian woman searching for what is missing in her life, risks her own safety to rescue poetry for future generations. the play's premise is that when nature as we know it vanishes, then art and creativity will vanish with it.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Fairfax Studio, Melbourne, VIC
20 Feb 1998
Organisations:
Melbourne Theatre Company
1st Published:
Currency Press, Australia, July 1999
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:
2 acts Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 5 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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