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Phil Ormsby

PHIL ORMSBY  

 Nationality:    New Zealander
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

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

 Biscuit & Coffee         Drowning in Veronica Lake         Model Woman, A         Murder by Chocolate

Biscuit & Coffee

Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
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1st Published:
-   -

Music:
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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:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Drowning in Veronica Lake

Synopsis:
From under-age Miss Florida to Hollywood icon. From glamorous to anonymous, adored to discarded. Veronica Lake - Dead but not lying down. Revisit the Golden Age of Hollywood via the sordid underbelly of the film industry in Flaxworks latest production, Drowning in Veronica Lake - a darkly comic tribute to the eponymous 1940's screen siren. Trapped in an other worldly green room somewhere between Paramount and Purgatory the fictional personality of Veronica Lake graces us with a highly theatrical account of her meteoric rise to fame and glamour and equally spectacular decline. Alex Ellis plays the faded star, who has been dead for 40 years but is still optimistic for a comeback. You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision Veronica Lake. Veronica Lake was one of Hollywood's most glamorous stars in the 1940s. At the peak of her brief career she campaigned tirelessly for the US war effort, took tea with Eleanor Roosevelt, piloted her own plane from coast to coast, was famously sued by her own mother and was bankrupted by the IRS before a rapid descent into obscurity, alcoholism and a premature and lonely death as an unknown 50 year old cocktail waitress. Typecast early in her career as the ice cool blonde, the archetypal femme fatale, she was thrust into the limelight at an early age, as Hollywood's newest sensation. Naive and unprepared she left in her wake a polarised industry who either loved or loathed her. In Drowning in Veronica Lake the untangling of the truth about her career, her alcoholism, her fractured family and her five husbands becomes a battle for centre stage - between the romantic view of the world presented by her old movies and the mocking and cynical personality of Veronica Lake.
- http://www.theatreview.org.nz

Notes:
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1st Produced:
the Garden Club, 13b Dixon Street, Wellington    22 Feb 2011

Organisations:
Flaxworks

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:
60 min

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Model Woman, A

Synopsis:
Paris in the decade after World War One. They were exciting times. Emancipation and sexual freedom were expressed in a fantastic outburst. New and scandalous artistic movements were celebrated in an increasingly mechanical era. Paris was the cultural capital of the world and Lili Elbe and Gerda and Einar Wegener were at its heart. A Model Woman is a new New Zealand play written by Phil Ormsby, performed by Alex Ellis and Simon Coleman, based on the true story of Lili Elbe and of Gerda and Einar Wegener, Danish husband and wife artists who lived a Bohemian existence in decadent 1920s Paris. The music of Ravel and Stravinsky, the art of Picasso, writers like Hemmingway, George Sand and Gertrude Stein and popular jazz and cabaret artists made the Wegeners feel the world was their oyster and they embraced it fully. Gerda illustrated for fashionable women's magazines and her principal model, a mysterious brunette she called Lili, was actually Einar dressed in women's clothes. The pair lived a double life, appearing in public sometimes as man and wife but more often as a lesbian couple. Eventually Lili decided she could not continue living in a man's body and, with Gerda's help, sought a doctor willing to undertake the world's first gender reassignment surgery. Once recovered, Lili underwent further operations to make conception possible and the risky surgery in a field that was in its infancy proved fatal. On her death bed Lili insisted she had no regrets pursuing her personal identity even though it meant sacrificing her career, her relationship and eventually her life. "It's about bravery. I'm in awe of Lili to have travelled such an unknown path in her search for personal identity. It's a beautiful story," says Phil Ormsby, playwright. At a time when women in the western world were claiming liberation from men in enormously significant ways, Lili aspired to be the sort of woman that men of the period expected all women to be: feminine, demurring and anxious to marry and bear children. In doing so she found herself in direct conflict with Gerda who viewed such choices as contrary to everything a twentieth century woman should be. With original music created by Adrian Hollay, the production reflects the careless optimism of the period and contrasts with the darker themes of depression and sexual identity as gender lines are blurred and crossed. Musical, provocative and uplifting, A Model Woman tells the fantastical story of a couple looking for freedom, identity and choice in the twentieth century. A love story that transcends physical identity. - http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/production.php?id=3513

Notes:
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1st Produced:
Basement, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland    22 Oct 2013

Organisations:
Flaxworks in association with The Basement

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:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Murder by Chocolate

Synopsis:
Felicia Fargo, a disenchanted romance writer determined to embrace the gritty world of crime writing, unwittingly finds herself embroiled in a bizarre series of murders by chocolate! As accusations fly, the chocolate finger of suspicion shifts and the body count rises, Felicia and her clueless assistant Dorian race to untangle the lies, plot twists and red herrings leading them to the bittersweet truth.

Notes:
written by Phil Ormsby And Alex Ellis

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

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:
Comedy

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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