Justin Fleming – August 14 2016

National Science Week – August 13-21 2016

Justin has written for theatre, music theatre, television and cinema, and has published several histories. He holds law degrees from Dublin University and The University of Sydney, a Master of Laws from University College London, and has studied at the Ensemble Theatre. Justin practised as a barrister in Dublin and Sydney before devoting himself full-time to writing. In addition to his original works, Justin has written adaptations of Émile Zola’s The Department Store and DH Lawrence’s Kangaroo. His work as librettist/lyricist includes Crystal Balls, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Continental. His other plays include Soldier of the Mind, about Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and A Land Beyond the River, set around a school production of To Kill a Mockingbird and particularly suitable for school performance. Justin has been vice-president of the Australian Writers’ Guild and a board member of the Australian National Playwrights’ Centre. His writer residencies include Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon, the Don Bank Museum and Tasmanian Writers’ Centre. International recognition of his work includes the Nancy Keesing Writer’s Fellowship to the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, the Dr Robert and Lina Thyll-Dürr Foundation, La Casa Zia Lina, Elba, Italy, the New York New Dramatists’ Exchange Award and the Banff PlayRites Residency, Canada.

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Origin
Australian Script Centre, 2009
120 minutes; 4 female, 4 male (gender breakdown flexible)
Cast age: 3-8, 8-12, 12-16, 16-18, 18+
Audience age: young adult, adult
Commissioned by the Melbourne Theatre Company, and written during one of his Writer’s Residencies at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon, this play dramatises the relationship between Emma and Charles Darwin – the religion of one woman versus the science of one man. Their respective positions continue to reflect the impact of the doctrine of Natural Selection today. At its heart, this is a story of courage, tragedy and love.

The Starry Messenger (published in Coup d’Etat & Other Plays)
Xlibris Corporation, 2004; ISBN 9781413441017
120 minutes; 2 female, 7 male;
Cast age: 16-18, 18+
Audience age: young adult, adult
This theatrical account of the emergence of the New Music of the Earth and the New Music of the Spheres is set in modern day Florence where festival playwright, Rachel, is writing about Italy in 1600. This was the year Vincenzo Galilei was working towards the world’s first opera and his son, Galileo Galilei, discovered that the earth moves around the sun. Together, they caused mayhem. But in unexpected and gradually chilling ways, the past invades Rachel’s life, placing her at the centre of a dangerous web of intrigue.