To assist you in finding a play for performing at the Festival we have listed below

• Plays that have been performed at Festivals over the years
• Original scripts by new authors

Most published plays are available from Samuel French Ltd.   Companies choosing to perform a published script have the responsibility of purchasing scripts from and paying performing rights to publishers. The Festival organisers take no responsibility for plays performed without payment of performing rights.

For copies of Ian Austin’s scripts apply direct to:
Ian Austin 35 School Rd Victoria Point QLD 4165
Tel 07 3820 8946

To perform new works permission to perform and performing right payments must be negotiated with the playwright. Contact Festival organisers for contact details if available. All copyright laws must be observed and copying of scripts is not allowed without permission of the author.

All copyright laws must be observed and copying of scripts is not allowed without permission.

For further information contact the organisers on 02 6286 9122 or email nina@canberraplayfest.com.au

F’lack o’Felucca    Comedy
By Ian Austin
2F 3M

Fun aboard a Nile Cruise ship when a worldy (Aussie) Couple pit their wits against a couple of Ockers with hilarious and unexpected results.

A Duchess on Thursday – Drama Thriller
By Ian Austin
1F 1M

An old lady is trapped by a young man, with diabolical consequences.

An Elephant in the Harem Comedy/Drama
By Ian Austin
3F 2M

A writer pays his respects to a marvellous maharani in her decaying Indian palace and finds more startling stories than he imagined.

April Accusations – Drama
By Ian Austin
4F 1M

A study in schizophrenia, as an overnight guest is accused of murder at last night’s part.  But when the corpse walks in, the complexities really start.

Big Dream for a Little Man – Comedy
By Ian Austin
2F 2M

When hen-pecked Bill’s most outrageous fantasy comes true, his family is family is in for unanticipated and hilarious shocks!

Billy With Gravy – Black Comedy
By Ian Austin
1F 3M

It’s about survival (ie who gets eaten and who gets to eat) during Sydney Towns disastrous 1789 famine.  Traditional Grand Guignol at its horrifying best.

Country Farce – Comedy
By Ian Austin
4F 3M

Three members of a family have to propose to their respective amours urgently.  But the eldest son must be first and he is heading back to town in 30 minutes.  They have only that long to change his mind.  Rampant, fast paced and hilarious.

Bespoke Overcoat The
By Wolf Mankowits
4M

Love is a luxury which very poor people can afford.  Fender does not get enough food or a tailor-made overcoat, in this life.  But he accepts with humility the deprivations forced upon him.  To prefer to go on living is to love in the context of this story and because this is loving at its most deprived, the story is a sad one.

Last of the Cheesecake The
By Wolf Mankowits
2F 1M male voices off

The Last of the Cheesecake is based on Chekhov’s story, The Chorus Girl.  Lou is a married man and Annie his mistress.  Tilly, Lou’s wife completes the triangle.

It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog
By Wolf Mankowits
2M

This play is a serio-comic strip, which, those who know the story of Jonah will see, is faithful to the original.  The message of this story?  “Why should I not spare Nineveh?”  This is one hopes, how God feels about Man – unlike Man who is less tolerant of himself

Mighty Hunter The
By Wolf Mankowits
2M

This play draws upon both biblical and folk sources to tell the familiar moral story of the successful man who forgets that he remains a man.

5 One Act Plays by Howard Brenton designed for performance by companies with little or no budget and less than ideal theatre conditions.

A Kind of Alaska (performed 2004 Festival)
By Harold Pinter
2F 1M

The play describes the awakening of a victim of encephalitis lethargica – sleeping sickness.  Speechless, motionless but conscious of her surroundings for fifty years, she is brought back to life with the drug L-DOPA.

Albert (performed 2004 Festival)
By Richard Harris
2M 1F

When three strangers come together, none of whom speak each other’s language, chaos reigns.  Two of the three characters speak only their native tongue, Italian and Finnish, but what we hear is straightforward English.  Occasionally the attempt a few words in an alien tongue but this serves only to hurtle them faster towards an unexpected resolution of the challenges of the European Union.

A Visit from Miss Prothero
By Alan Bennett
Male 60’s Female middle aged
North England accents

Mr Dodsworth has recently retired.  Sitting at home he is contemplating his life and achievements with quiet satisfaction when there is a sharp ring at the door: his former secretary has come to ruin it all.

After Midnight Before Dawn (performed 2005 Festival)
By David Campton
4F  1M

Set in the mid 17^th century, six people sentenced to death on the gallows for witchcraft have only hours to live.

Can You Hear the Music?
By David Campton
6 Male or Female

The sort of person we really are is shown by what we want most: or as this extreme case of mice being lured to their doom by the Pied Piper, what we would risk everything else (including our lives) for.  What counts is not what we think we are like, but what we actually do.

Edwin
By John Mortimer
1F 2M plus 2M extras

Sir Fennimore Truscott, a retired judge, sits under his mulberry tree and “tries’ his next door neighbour Tom Marjoriebanks for – allegedly – seducing Truscott’s wife Margaret many years earlier.  Is Tom the father of Edwin, Fennimore and Margaret’s only son?  Barbed with and a wealth of judicial felicities make this comedy a delight from swearing in to verdict.

English Made Simple (Performed 2005 Festival)
By David Ives
2M 1F

Conversations at parties can be a struggle between saying what you mean and meaning what you say in simple English.

From Here to the Library
By Jimmi Chin
2M 1F

Mr Gostilow comes to Beryl’s house to find out why she has been off work for so long.  It is an awkward meeting not helped by the presence of Dad, Beryl’s cantankerous father.  Not an ideal setting for middle age romance, or is it?

Have You Met Our Rabbit?
By Michael Stevens
1M 1F

How does a middle aged European mother who does not speak English, communicate with her son’s friend who does not speak her language – or is there a way to cross that barrier?

Happy Birthday Mum
By Helen Wyngard
2F 2M 2 voices off

The tyranny of distance!  Jan phones her mum in England for her birthday and as they talk, an intruder breaks into her mother’s house.  What can Jan do?  Meanwhile her mother is faced with the intruder who intends to kill her.

In The Blood
By Helen Wyngard
2F 1M

A women in prison for murder offers the true facts of her case as an exclusive story to a young female prisoner.  In the confines of the interview room the journalist discovers she has more in common with the prisoner than she could ever have imagined.

Interior Designs
By Jimmie Chinn
3F 1M

No man can be all things to all women.  Or can he?

Impromptu
By Tad Mosel
2M 2F

In Pirandello style, this play is a provocative treatment of a popular theme:  How much truth and how much illusion does a person need to live a balanced life?

Last Bread Pudding The (Performed 2003 Festival)
By Nick Warburton
4F 3M

An amateur drama group of pretentious “luvvies” meet to discuss their entry in a forthcoming Festival of Plays.  As they argue heatedly life soon imitates art.

Last Scene of All
By Margaret Wood
5F 2M

The residents of Gwynne-Garrick Home for Retired Artistes plan their annual Christmas entertainment

Out of the Flying Pan (Performed 2004 Festival)
By David Campton
2M

In true absurdist style, diplomats A and B meet in front of the world’s media to sign an important treaty.  Nothing goes as planned and the crazy game of world politics and events are highlighted in this clever, entertaining satire.

Parable of the Potter The – (Performed 2004 Festival)
By Eve Old
4M 2F

This play is a local parody of the Prodigal Son story.

Say Something Happened
By Alan Bennett
2F 1M

The Social Service Department is preparing a register of the elderly in the area.  Mam and Dad have no intention of being registered.  A highly comic, ironic look at patronising bureaucracy.

Snow Angel (Performed 2005 Festival)
1M 1F

A prostitute is paid by a client to re-enact his first moments of meeting his past love.

Sure Thing (Performed 2004 Festival)
By Jason Buzas
2F 1M

Being on a blind date can be a nightmare.  What if you aren’t good enough?  Betty and Bill find that you just have to keep trying until you get it right.

Trip of a Lifetime (Performed 2004 Festival)
By Bill Cashmore and Andie Powrie
2M 1F and voice overs

Barry has been recently divorced.  He sets off for a round the world trip with his parents.  A big mistake as their ways drive him to distraction.

With All My Love I Hate You
By Lynda Marchal
2F

A tense play for two women.  Julia is surprised to receive a visit from her one-time friend Clare as Julia is mistress of Jerry who was Clare’s husband.  What starts as a quiet and uncomfortable talk erupts in violence and tragedy, with an ironic twist at the end.

Contact Festival Organisers for author contact details

A New Lease on Life – Original, unpublished script – available by email
By Peter Bloem
3F 1M

Renters beware! A couple get more than they bargained for when they visit the real estate agent to renew their lease.  A comedy about a tragedy.

Another Piece of Crap Original Unpublished Script
By Michael Weston
4M 3F plus assorted cast set in audience

The Canberra Region Amateur Players (CRAP) are back again and this time is it their AGM with stalwart Donald up for re-election. But this time someone has dared to stand against him. What will be the result?

Aunt Ethels’ Death Notice
By Darren Brearly
2M 2F

Ethel Lane, 82 years old, has passed away and her grieving family soon fall to squabbling over their right to Ethel’s personal belongings. Perhaps an open coffin at the funeral service would have solved the problem.

A Waif is Born
By Barbara Malpass Original, unpublished script – available by email
1F 1M

Where do authors get their ideas from?  A young woman alone on the Goldfields in the 1800’s become the first female Australian crime writer. 

Baby, Cradle and All (Winner of Wagga Wagga Festival Script Award 1994)
By Donald Burrell

Meeting your boyfriend’s family can be traumatic.  Aunt Margret is like Julian’s mother, and brought him up as her own son, loving and protecting him.  Or is there something more sinister in the relationship?

Balls Up The Original, unpublished script – available by email
By Marya Glyn Daniel
2F 1M

Alex plays with the big boys when she stages a footy match to launch doyen sports writer Crackers Grove’s book “Football in the Seventies”.  The week before the launch it all starts to go pear shaped.  Is it going to be a total balls up?

Bent
By Peter Bloem – Original, unpublished script– available by email
2F 1M

A comedy about friendships, relationships and genetically modified organisms.

Easy Way Out The - Original unpublished script
By David Temme
2M 2F

This is what happens when a family does not face up to their problems following a family tragedy.

Champagne Ladies
By Darren Brearly
1M 2F

Narelle and Darlene are two preened and primped darlings of the society set and all the challenges faced by young society girls to keep up appearances

Damaged Hero – Original unpublished script (Performed 2004 Festival)
By Carl Law
1M 2F

Guilt destroys a marriage and family as Bob fights the demons that haunt him.

Disturbing Mavis
By Darren Brearly
3M 2F

Mavis is a lonely soul in an nursing home. She fills the boredom of her days and the consequences of growing old by reading and engaging in one-sided arguments with her inert husband, Alfred.

Eradication of the Core Weasels – Original, unpublished script – available by email
By David Gerken
3M

The year is 2019.  The place the newly established Anti-Weasel Unit.  The President is determined to use this Unit to rid the country of the worst instances of weaselly behaviour which is now a Federal crime.

Extra Time
By Annie Bilton Unpublished original script
2F

Two step sisters are locked in a game of love and hate.  Now they are into extra time and each is determined on victory.

Fate-tale-istic – Original unpublished script (Performed 2005 Festival)
By Dione McAlary
4F

Fates are named from Greek Mythology, the weavers of all destinies.  Three: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, existing before the time of all gods, the sisters – the virgin, matron and crone.  Clotho determines the time of birth, lachesis, how long you roam on this earth.  Until Atropos, so powerful and wise, delivers Hades his ultimate prize.  It’s the stuff of Greek tragedies for Jacinta, Demeter and Susan.

Fairytale Ending (Winner Playwrights Award 2005)
By Jonathan Garland
3M 2F

Five people have come to a remote island to search for an exotic spider.  But each is looking for something else.  Personalities clash, secrets are revealed and people are faced with hidden sides of their personalities.

Fergus Envy
By Darren Brearly
1M 3F

On day three of Lord Florien Thrust’s house party, held in honour of his Valium-medicated dog, Titiana wakes up to find she is in a mysterious house and in the middle of two women’s plans to relieve Lord Florien of is fortune.

Genius of Bill Shakespeare The – Original unpublished script
By Bill Fleming
2M 2F and M and F voices off

The quill, desk top computer or lap top – does a writer’s muse really care?

Hero The – Unpublished original script
By Bill Fleming
2M

The Captain, trapped in a submarine, is quite a hero – or is he?

Gulf Country
By Maria Glyn-Daniel
4F 1M

“..short, sweet and succinct …confronts an issue that has moved into the political realm of Australia as a dividing force – racism”  The Canberra Times

Joy Flight The – Unpublished original script
By Bill Fleming
1M 1F

It is a perfect day for a joyflight.  Harry and Ellen watch the world unfolding beneath.  But soon their world starts to fall apart.

Just Another Day – Unpublished original script (Performed 2005 Festival)
By Bruce Vincent
3F 4M

Why is Jollie Fish, lawyer, hiding in the toilet drunk and disorderly on Christmas Eve?  Could it have something to do with the women waiting for him in his office?  His secretary wanting her pay?  His landlord? The walls are closing in for Jollie.  Is suicide the only way out?

Landing Delayed – Unpublished original work (Winner Best Playwright and performed 2004)
Available on email
By Joan McGillivray
1M 1F

Ted and Hazel are two strangers who meet at the airport while waiting for their children to arrive off a plane.  Their lives are couldn’t be more different from each other – or do they have something in common after all?

Lifting Lucy
By Eris Jane
45- 50 mins
2 M 2 F

Lucy is a young woman in a wheelchair, tired of being shut out of her workplace because she can’t get up the stairs. She enlists her counsellor and an unemployed man to help her occupy the office. The situation turns tricky when a fire warden is taken hostage and the four resolve their differences in a tense but humorous clash of personalities and attitudes.

Literary Lights Original Unpublished Script
By David Stambrook
3M 2F

Tsarist Russia, 1180. Tolstoy, aristocrat and leading novelist, is undergoing a mid-life crisis. Full of despair and self loathing he rejects religion and art, renounces his wealth and embarks on a new age spiritual metamorphosis that brings him into conflict with his wife, family, authority, contemporary politics, his great literary rival – Dostoevsky – himself and Christ.

Local Rag The -Original Unpublished script
By Brian Hungerford
2M

The definition of a Local Rag is “something which the town buys, already knowing the stories, but interested to see how much the editor is game to print”.

Mismatched – Original unpublished script (Performed 2004 Festival)
3M 2F

Two desperate divorced couples who are terrifyingly mismatched by a dating agency, are paired opposite each other at the world’s worst restaurant.

Penniless Penny
By Darren Brearly
4M 3F plus additional males and females as needed

When Lady Tornsock throws a party to find her son and heir a wife, the local township attend. Skulduggery ensues as Master Lauderdale, Murgatroyd Miller and Master Lauderdale’s manservant plot and plan to achieve their own ends.

Pre-emptive – Original unpublished script
By Gerri McBurney
(10 – 15 Minutes)
1M 1F

Jean’s life is “just a little life”.  But deep inside she harbours a dream, the one thing that keeps her going and that is always denied her.  Jean’s dream will ultimately lead her to desperate measures.

Prompt The Original unpublished script (Performed at 2005 Festival)
By Michael Weston
4M 3F

A play within a play where everything goes wrong.  On opening night there is only one person who can save the show.

Rice Pudding
By Ashley Walker
2M 1F

A teddy bear manufacturer decides to kill his mother in order to achieve emotional independence. He gains support from his psychiatrist father, on the condition that Father can use him for a study of psychopaths who kill their mothers. However, they must wait till after dessert. Mother is cooking Rice Pudding.

Scarlet Moon Original Unpublished Script
By Mike Glasheen
7M 3F (roles may be doubled)

Lou’s bar is usually almost empty except for the local drunk Sam.  But tonight there is something very mysterious going on.  A fast moving farce.

Separating the Dust
By Darren Brearly
2M 1F

After their mothers funeral, Michael and Chad discuss her Final Will and testament. Chad’s wife, Raelen’s makes her feelings about Michael known which aggravates the underflow of smouldering years of unspoken hatred between the three of them.
Meanwhile another funeral service is to be held at five o’clock.

Spring
By Darren Brearly
4F

Each spring Mrs Wentworth-Brewster’s dowdy rooms are spring-cleaned of their previous occupants. The dust remains, only its occupants disappear - in the vegetable patch which Mrs Wentworth-Brewster attends along with her imaginary friend, Marjorie. Soon three young female students will join the vegies in the patch.

The Mechanics
By Darren Brearly
2M

Old school, all-knowing tradesman, Norbert works hard at keeping ahead of the next crisis in the car repair workshop. He takes Colin, the new kid, under his wing, tutoring him in the sacred art of mechanical ethics, love and relationships. But Colin isn’t as stupid as appearances initially indicate.

The Stair
By Darren Brearly
2M

The age-old story of office politics and justification of jobs. The lift is broken. The boss, Mr Green, meets Carson in the fire stairwell. It seems the task of getting the lift fixed couldn’t be easier. Could it? Until the process of meetings, faxes, memos, voice mail and the other trappings of bureaucracy tie up the job with red tape.

Truck Stop on the Edge of Forever Original Unpublished Script
Winner Best Orginal Drama Script 2007
By Bruce Vincent
4M 3F

Is it possible to change the past to alter your future? Jessica and Thomas hope so. Otherwise they will remain as lost souls, drifting for eternity stranded in the void between life and death in the truck stop on the edge of forever.

Two Old Ladies and a Stiff Original Unpublished Script
By Michael Weston
2M 2F

Gladys comes home on Sunday morning to find her dear husband Melvyn in his favourite chair ..dead. What will she do now, how will she cope? And then there are the next door neighbours.

What’s in a Name Original Unpublished Script
Nominated Best Original Script 2002
By Michael Weston
2M 3F

Peter is a writer who hasn’t done much for a while and then finds himself writing for a well known soapie. His girl friend is a research scientist researching the nature of time. In a major accident Pete sets off a train of events which brings “the bard” himself to our time. While they are trying to send him back, Pete gets him to help write the plot for the soapie.

Who the Hell is Martin Copper Original Unpublished script
Winner of Best Original Comedy Script 2007
by Brenton Amies
3M 2F

An enfeebled Death is taken advantage of by a cocky young uni student called Martin Copper. Martin wins the right to another day on earth in a one on one game of Uno with Death and decides to live his last day as only he wants to. For Martin this means anything from ridding China of Communism to reforming the members of Led Zeppelin.