Fairy-tales reworked, funny, furious and fantastic, as tales of the marginalised.Original fairy-tales were about bravado, fortune, destiny and courage. But always, watching from the edges, were the quiet ones. The bit characters. The weary mothers, the ugly sisters, the irrelevant queens, the grandmothers.In The Magic Hour, they get their chance to shine.From beach shacks and caravan parks, in Housing Commission towers and old school discos, in backyard gar...

On 23 October 2002, Chechen rebels stormed a theatre in Moscow, holding hundreds of theatregoers hostage. Three days later, in Newcastle, Australia, a young man staged an armed robbery in a bookshop.Checklist for an Armed Robber picks up the threads of these two real life events and weaves them together in an attempt to better examine the complex patterns of violence, courage and empathy. This AWGIE-winning play from Vanessa Bates observes with sensitivity and humour the p...

All Jed’s friends have moved to the city, but he still lives with his two mothers in a small town between the beach and the bush, on a train line with a city at either end. Waiting.He’s not sure what he’s waiting for, but in the meantime he works at the council investigating sinkholes in people’s backyards. Since finishing high school, the frustrations of coastal life are looming large. And something is being hidden from him about the illness facing one of his mothers.This ...

Adapted by Vanessa Bates from Gabrielle Wang's award-winning novel, A Ghost in My Suitcase is an action-packed adventure story that crosses cultural and spiritual worlds.Twelve-year-old Celeste - 'half French, half Chinese and all Australian' - travels to China to scatter her mother's ashes. There she meets her grandmother, Por Por, a quirky and wise woman with an unusual skill. Por Por is a ghost-hunter and her services are much in demand.When Celeste learns she m...

Loneliness, fear, bad dreams, repressed attraction or repugnance, lockdown and sudden escapes, jigsaw puzzles, food deliveries, bad tempers and penguins.These were the things that stole our sleep for a year, or that rescued, haunted and comforted us. In the early days of Covid lockdown in 2020, playwrights Vanessa Bates, Mary Rachel Brown, Suzie Miller, Lachlan Philpott and Katie Pollock came together in a virtual writing group to support each other and spur each other on. There we...

Follow the daily routine of a Miner Dad and his family while on shift at the Mt. Rawdon Gold Mines. Part–Time Miner, Full-Time Dad is a children’s book for all mining families to enjoy. This story is based on a very special father-daughter relationship and how they adapt to living apart. “Your Dad does something different to what most daddies do, He’s a miner at a mine site and he does it all for you.” ‘Part-Time Miner, Full - Time Dad’ is a children’s story book written by Miner’s Wife, f...