Leigh Swinbourne

Fair Play

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:48:42 +0000

An aging businessman stands at the grave of an old colleague. He recalls a climactic incident in the life of both of them that led to the dead man’s destruction…

A fine act of trespass…”
—The Mercury

Style: heightened naturalism
Length: 30 minutes
Cast: 0 female, 2 male
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform

The Tryst

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:47:27 +0000

A couple spending a night together are joined by a stranger. The three become trapped in a triangle of increasing suspicion, sexual jealousy and violence while a wild electrical storm builds outside …

The Tryst is a one-act melodrama/black comedy set in a deserted farmhouse in the country.

Style: black comedy
Length: 60 minutes
Cast: 1 female, 2 male
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform

Sleepwalking

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:46:55 +0000

Brian Redman is a former tennis star and minor celebrity running a successful sports franchise business. His assistant is young, ambitious and fancies him. Another employee and long-time friend still harbours affection for Brian’s wife Angela. She is the focus of the play, a former actress now housewife who feels that the vital years of life are passing her by.

Angela’s growing disquiet, particularly concerning Brian, precipitates a series of mounting crises. Her complicated road to eventual self-realisation involves all characters in a variety of farcical and dramatic confrontations.

Style: comedy
Length: 90 minutes
Cast: 2 female, 2 male
Cast age: 18+
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform

Empty Harvest

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:46:19 +0000

Frank Mason has farmed the family property, inherited through three generations, all his life. It is his only world but it is imploding. Bad loans and drought have reduced him to a state of desperation. All hopes rest on his son, studying agriculture in America and shortly to return. Frank’s wife, Elizabeth, is tired of the worries and work and wants him to sell up, as does local bank agent and family lawyer Dan Watts.

The property hides a terrible secret about which Frank is in denial. His son, John, returns determined to reveal this and reclaim his love for his half-sister, Josephine. His clash with his father and subsequent actions over the farm precipitate tragedy.

Set in country New South Wales.

…Generational differences power this confronting work all the way to its explosive climax”
—The Mercury

Style: drama
Length: 90 minutes
Cast: 2 female, 3 male
Cast age: 18+
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform

Youth

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:45:35 +0000

Youth explores the role of belief and delusion in romantic love, and also in the creative act. In what appears to be an interview, but might be a confession, an old man, Henry, recalls a pivotal gathering of five friends of which he was then the youngest: a sought-after model and an aspiring artist.

This party has been organised by his older lover, Clarissa Luewin, a famous artist, at her house in the Blue Mountains above Sydney. It is the late 1930s, and the day has been chosen so the guests can observe the rare appearance of a famous comet later in the evening. While they wait for this, Clarissa, for personal reasons, proposes each in turn tell a story from their youth, that feel encapsulates what ‘youth’ means for them.

The stories turn into self-revelations, which as they unfold, highlight and augment existing tensions within the group—particularly the rivalry between Henry and Clarissa’s former lover, Bert, an alcoholic and disappointed communist, who has returned from overseas to claim her back.

Matters reach a head between these two and at this point of unresolved tension, just prior to the blaze of the comet, Clarissa tells the culminating tale, her long bitter fantasy of lost dreams and faith, an explanation for her ensuing shedding of Henry for Bert, and a veiled apologia for her imminent suicide.

Style: naturalistic drama
Length: 70 minutes
Cast: 2 female, 4 male
Cast age: 18+
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform

The Mark of Cain

onetonne — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 05:45:10 +0000

The Mark of Cain is two integrated stories exploring migrant tensions in contemporary urban Australia, and the ways in which past lives can impact on the present.

In Family Business, a Palestinian woman purchases a block of flats for her extended family, in an orthodox Jewish area. The real estate agent, an aspirant for local Mayor, negotiates the difficult transaction and the problems it causes. His efforts are complicated by his blossoming love for the woman, and a dark secret concerning the war record of his father.

Seed of the Revolution concerns that same father and the incident that will affect lives decades later in another country. We are in Poland in the 1930s. An unsuccessful campaign by the Soviet Army involves the court martial, on the field of battle, of a Bolshevik soldier by his commanding officer, who is his own son.

This script was shortlisted for the 2005 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the judges commending it for “the bold scale of the play and the importance of the issues it deals with, the vivid and interesting characters, and the great theatrical opportunities it offers.”

Style: naturalistic drama
Length: 90 minutes
Cast: 2 female, 5 male
Cast age: 18+
Audience age: adult
Publisher: Australian Plays Transform