Stephen Carleton – January 3 2016

Stephen holds a Masters and Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Queensland where he is currently Senior Lecturer in Drama. In addition to his teaching and research, Stephen is a professional playwright and dramaturge. He won the 2004/5 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award with Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset, and received a 2010 ARC Discovery Grant with colleagues Jane Stadler and Peta Mitchell to undertake research towards producing a Cultural Atlas of Australia which will mediate spaces in theatre, film and literature. His other works include Bastard Territory, shortlisted for both the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award (2011) and QPDA (2012), and The Turquoise Elephant, an absurdist comedy about contrasts: grotesque privilege and dispossession, sanity and insanity, hope and fatalism, and the trilogy for secondary students: Bullets With Dragonfly Wings, Pretty Fly (For A Mala Guy) and Smells Like Impulse. Stephen has also written a number of plays and political cabarets for Knock-em-Down Theatre and Darwin Theatre Company in the Northern Territory, and JUTE in Cairns, Queensland.

Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset
Playlab Press, 2006; ISBN 0908156987
Full length play; 3 female, 3 male
It is 1899 and only the resolve of Lady Constance Drinkwater has kept the Far North Queensland settlement of Somerset from crumbling. Beset by storms, ill-luck and a mysterious disease that has killed all but two of Constance’s children, it is the arrival of strangers – anthropologist Professor Cornelius Crabbe and his companion, Mr Hop Lee – that sets in motion the final catastrophic days of Somerset. This post-colonial melodrama is hilarious and sad in equal measure, and a proud addition to the growing genre of Australian gothic.

The Narcissist
Playlab Press, 2008; ISBN 9780908156993
1.5 hours; 5-6 cast members
Sydney Xavier is a narcissist. He is a jaded, single, urban professional living in New Farm and the prospects of finding a psychosexually well-adjusted partner are beginning to fade. Enter Bronwyn, an equally committed boozy malcontent and best friend who challenges Xavier to a duel – “Six weeks to bag a man! No ifs, no buts, no limits, no boundaries and no rules!” This riotous and politically incorrect post-modern comedy of manners about middle-class, middle-age sexual politics is guaranteed to leave audiences in gasping fits.