Beatrix Christian – October 10 2021

Beatrix is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. A graduate of NIDA, she has been an Affiliate Writer then Writer-in-Residence with the Sydney Theatre Company’s New Stages, and was the winner of the inaugural Australian Playwright’s Commission. Beatrix’s other plays include her first play, Spumante Romantica; Blue Murder, a modern gothic romance set on the natural stone formation resembling a gothic cathedral in the centre of Sydney Harbour known as Blackrock; Faust’s House, a feminist account of the Faust myth exploring science and its effect on those involved with it throughout history; and Inside Dry Water, inspired by Arthur Boyd’s ‘Bride in the bush’ series bringing these paintings dramatically to life. In addition to her own work, Beatrix has adapted other plays such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, and Chekhov’s Three Sisters, co-adapted with Benedict Andrews. Beatrix wrote the screenplay for Jindabyne, co-wrote the screenplay Hearts and Bones with Ben Lawrence, and the teleplay for Eisfieber.

Fred
Australian Script Centre, 1999; ISBN 9780987392961
120 minutes; 3 female, 4 male
Young adult; adult
Pamela Maude discovers a corpse under the Hills Hoist in a suburban back yard. Nobody knows him … it …. but her find catalyses a hilariously manic succession of events: suicides, sibling rivalry, sexual coupling, a mysterious double-pregnancy and an uncloseting …. With the help of her actress sister, a used Porsche salesman, a futures broker and a confused detective, Pamela must resolve the mystery of the unidentified cadaver, so she can find the key to happiness for them all.
‘Christian is one of the most prescient and incisive writers we have in this country, and Fred is an example of her writing at its most biting, precise and satiric.’ – Tom Healey, Red Door Curator

The Governor’s Family
Phoenix Education, 1997; ISBN 9781921085727
240 minutes; 3 female, 3 male
Young adult, adult; Cast age: 16 to 18, 18+
The ultimate dysfunctional family and a representation of all the ills colonialists and succeeding generations of Australians have perpetrated on the Aboriginal people who once believed this was their land, no question. The Governor’s family is a fictitious family in New South Wales in the late 19th century, at a time when a number of white men were facing execution for the rape of an Aboriginal girl. The play reveals the tensions between the Governor and his wife, and their two children – between values of the European past and the new world of the colony. It also reveals the contrast between the Governor’s public face and his private life.