Alison Mann – March 17 2019

Anniversary of the Forced Adoptions Apology – March 21 2013

Alison is a playwright based in Hobart, Tasmania. For the past two years she has been a part of Blue Cow Theatre’s development program working with dramaturge Peter Matheson, as a result of which her play, The Surgeon’s Hands, was performed by them in 2016. Her other plays include Baby/Doll, which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004 and in the 3DFest showcase at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre in 2005, and The Illustrated Girl, which was part of DARK MOFO’s Radio Gothic, a hybrid live radio play performance. Alison has been the recipient of several awards including a First Draft Award from PLAYWORKS, Sydney, and a Melbourne Dramatists Emerging Playwright Award. She was the 2017 recipient of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board Chairman’s Scholarship and undertook mentorships with performer Maude Davey and playwright Tom Holloway to produce a new body of work. Alison studied writing for performance at the Royal Court Theatre and Soho Theatre in London.

Image: Talya Chalef

She’s Not Performing
Australian Script Centre, 2012
70 minutes; 2 female, 2 male
Audience age: young adult; adult
Margarite visits a strip club and sees a stripper who is a mirror image of herself. She begins to believe that this could be the daughter she was pressured to adopt out as a teenager. The men in her life, her younger boyfriend Iain and close friend Hamish, play pivotal roles in deciphering the mystery of Margarite’s obsession with the young dancer and her hyper-sexualised world. She’s Not Performing journeys through the psyche of a woman in search of a child she once lost, grappling with subconscious fantasies and fears about her ability to reclaim her identity as a mother. Pulsing with bold images and stripped-back language, it’s a darkly surreal and tender look at past adoption practices in Australia and the impact they have in the present day.

Tabula Rasa!
Australian Script Centre, 2008
45 minutes, 3 female, 2 male
Audience age: young adult, adult
Tabula Rasa! is made up of three scenarios that take a disturbing and beautiful look at modern reproduction, gender and sexuality. In Scenario One (Children) a couple wrestle with unexpected pregnancy, in Scenario Two (Baby/Doll) a young woman with post-natal depression talks to her childhood doll, and in Scenario Three (Vanish Club) a young man entrenched in the world of nightclub sleaze, contemplates what could have been after his girlfriend has an abortion. Blending heightened language, tenderness and a touch of the surreal, Tabula Rasa! explores people at odds with themselves and the reality of bringing a child into the world.