Quick questions on Contemporary Australian theatre voices: HSC Drama core

By the 2000s the Australian theatre repertoire was anchored in the major state-funded companies: Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), Belvoir Street Theatre, Queensland Theatre Company, and the State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA). These companies commission new Australian work each season, employ resident dramaturgs, and run new-play development programs.

Born 1962, South Australia. Bovell trained as a screenwriter at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and has worked across stage and screen. His major plays.

Born 1957, Melbourne. Rayson trained at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been one of the most regularly produced Australian playwrights since the late 1980s.

Born 1955, Sydney. Gow trained at the Australian National University and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. His major work.

Born 1962, Melbourne. Murray-Smith has been one of the most consistently produced Australian playwrights since the 1990s.

Born 1951, Melbourne. Cornelius has been one of the most politically committed Australian playwrights of the period, writing about working-class women, sexual violence, and the casualties of contemporary capitalism. She has won the Patrick White Playwrights' Award (2009) and the Major Playwrights' Award.

The contemporary cohort is more formally varied than the New Wave was. Bovell's non-linear time, Cornelius's working-class urgency, Gow's Shakespearean scaffolding, Murray-Smith's psychological tightness, and Rayson's domestic-political range are very different artistic projects.

If your Australian Drama and Theatre pairing includes contemporary Australian voices, you may study Bovell, Rayson, Gow, Cornelius or another contemporary playwright. Strong answers identify the formal innovations, the place of the play in its company's repertoire, and how the work extends or departs from the Lawler and New Wave traditions.

Four interlocking stories of infidelity and disappearance. Four actors play eight characters. The play's structure was the basis for the 2001 film Lantana, adapted by Bovell.

Four generations of a family across London, Adelaide, and the Australian outback, from 1959 to 2039. The play's central image, a fish falling from the sky on a man in 2039 Alice Springs, ties the family story to a wider climate-changed Australia. Won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award.

A family of four adult children and their parents in suburban Adelaide. Adapted by Bovell working with Frantic Assembly (the British physical-theatre company). Toured internationally.

Bovell ranges across themes from colonial Australia to contemporary working-class politics.

Three sisters return to their family beach house on the Mornington Peninsula. One has written a controversial novel about the family. The play won the AWGIE Award and was filmed by Richard Franklin (1995).

A Mallee farming family across decades. The play examines the politics of farming, land, and family loyalty.

Two brothers in Australian Labor politics, loosely modelled on the contemporary Labor split. The play became controversial for its perceived political portraiture.