Alex Nicol – June 18 2017

International Take Your Dog to Work Day – June 24 2017

Alex dabbled in playwriting whilst working as a broadcaster with the ABC in regional Australia, becoming serious when he turned an early political action by the local Aboriginal community into the international prize-winning play Dancing Ground. After moving to Melbourne, a string of full length and short plays followed, starting with the Wal Cherry award-winning play Minties for the Tin and most recently, Three Months Two Weeks Four Days, a play exploring the frustrations of teenagers in a small country town. Alex’s other stage plays include The Boy Who Climbed Windmills, Skin Deep, Three Toe Scratch, Buying the Bag, Pigeons in the Park and Boughbreak. Alex has also written the performance pieces Penny a Program, commissioned by the Old Colonialist Association of Melbourne to celebrate its centenary, and Mad Mage, commissioned by Wagga City Council for the launch of the Federation Amphitheatre project. His radio documentary, A Land Fit for Heroes, is a six hour series on soldier settlement following WWI produced for the ABC. Nearing eighty, Alex continues to write and is currently working on a one man show inspired by the characters he met during his time as producer and presenter of the long running ABC radio program ‘All Ways On Sunday’.

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Horrie the Wog Dog
Cyberpress; available at www.stageplays.com
1 female, 3 male
Based on a true story, this play is about the bond between Horrie, the unofficial mascot for the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion of the Second Australian Imperial Force in WWII and the soldiers he fought with in Greece, Crete and Egypt, not as a mascot, but as a soldier who looked after his mates. He was wounded, recovered and against all odds was smuggled back to Australia where he was ordered to be executed. But the AIF does not surrender its mates ….

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Pickle Bottle Hill
Cyberpress; available at www.stageplays.com
3 female, 3 male
1878. Palmer River Goldfields. George Colley, tough bushman, strikes up an unlikely alliance with Ma Fu, a young Eurasian prostitute. Bound by clan loyalty she betrays his trust and tells of the fabulous gold discovery, but the gold is reef gold, and it means death for any Chinese found working reef gold. A hundred and fifteen years later, wealthy Hong Kong businesswoman, Ophelia Lu, returns to find and claim the reef. Spanning the century is archaeologist Daisy Maycock; she knows the secret and has her own reasons not to tell.