Cirrus@Austlit

'Helen and Clytemnestra live the domestic goddess dream in myth made modern.

'An ox stand on my tongue asks what if the infamous femme fatale and vilified husband murderer had actually once believed in an idealised domestic dream? What compelled them to justify – or to suppress – the experiences they had endured. 

'This is a play about two women who try – who really do try – to be well behaved, to be the perfect housewife, but who just happen to end up becoming the world’s most notorious adulterer and Husband killing Matricide.'

Source: Production blurb.

'Echo, a talkative nymph of the forest, is in love with Narcissus, who only loves himself. After she is rejected, Echo retreats to the caves, doomed to forever only repeat the words she hears. Narcissus is unable to tear himself away from his own reflection and turns into a flower on the riverbank.'

Source: Production blurb.

'Alex searches for life on a distant moon; Daniel begs an answer of the poets they cannot provide. And while attentions are elsewhere, a marriage melts into memory. Dorothy Porter's verse novel shifts from the vastness of space to the minute gaps between us.

'Love may come undone, but like light from a long-dead star its radiance can continue to move us. The late Porter is such a light, still illuminating Australia's literary landscape. Wild Surmise is a conversation, and it is its maker's inimitable voice ringing out among the many, both real and imagined, that chorus in this evocative work.'

Source: Malthouse Theatre website, http://www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Sighted: 15/10/2012

'... re-imagines the stories of Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra ... juxtaposes everyday domesticity with mythic excesses'.

Source: The R.E. Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards 2011 Judges' Report, State Library of Victoria website, www.slv.vic.gov.au (sighted 13/07/2011)

'2700 years ago, Sappho is the world's first love poet, the tenth muse of the ancient Greeks, and the inspiration for every lovelorn writer and songster since.

'But as the centuries have passed with the coming and goings of hundreds of libidinous handymen restoring her buttresses, history has caught up with Sappho. Her tale has become a gap in time for new generations to pour their needs and desires, but what is the truth behind her own story? Placed alongside a modern love story of sensuality, sexual awakening and broken-hearts, Sappho... in 9 Fragments exposes the timeless undoing of love.' (From the publisher's website.)