Cirrus@Austlit

'Stage performer Zahra Newman (The Mountaintop, The Book of Mormon, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) took a fairly straight route from drama school to the mainstage, Helpmann Award nominations and broad acclaim. With her highly charged one-woman retelling of Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright (Malthouse, Sydney Opera House), co-created with Declan Greene, she's cemented her reputation as one of Australia's most compelling actors. The 1971 film Wake in Fright is streaming now on ABC iView.

'The megahit Broadway musical Hamilton won't hit the Australian stage until 2021, but a filmed version of the Broadway production is now streaming on Disney+. Claire Nichols from RN's The Book Show saw the production on stage and has now gathered her family together to watch it on TV.

'For the ABC's Your Mental Health initiative, voice and dialect coach and Stage Show regular Leith McPherson runs us through some exercises that help us to manage anxiety on and off stage.' (Introduction)

'If you were planning a big night out in the 1920s, there's a good chance you'd head off to a show.' 

'Tony Birch and Tara June Winch are leading voices in the swelling chorus of Australian Indigenous writing.

'Their latest novels are potent stories of survival and hope, which, along the way, reveal the transformative power of Indigenous languages.

'These are major new works from two of Australia's most beguiling writers.

'They are speaking with Michael Cathcart.' (Introduction)

'When Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills set out on their fateful journey with the Victorian Exploring Expedition, Wills brought with him a diary in which to record his experiences. His entries would go on to help historians understand the circumstances that led to the tragic end of the expedition. Today, the diary is held by the National Library of Australia and forms the foundation of Starvation in a Land of Plenty.

'Between 23 April and 28 June 1861, Wills documented the torments and disappointments that led to his and Burke’s destruction. Surprising to many, though, Wills was not the second-in-command but, rather, the party’s ‘surveyor, astronomical and meteorological observer’. His resulting misfortune and the words he left behind have transformed the young English surveyor into both an Australian martyr and hero. Combined with images from the Library’s collection, this poignant and telling publication draws on Wills’ at times matter-of-fact account of his fatal weeks, revealing him to have been a man of great dignity and bravery. ' (Publication summary)

'The Water Dreamers is the story of the settlement of Australia: of the scarcity of water and the need to fill an imagined silence with the sounds of civilisation. From the moment the First Fleeters stepped ashore, water determined progress. The Tank Stream that flowed through what is now the Sydney CBD provided fresh water until settlers and their livestock fouled it. Then water from a nearby swamp was piped into the growing settlement. When it ran dry sights were set further afield.

'The Water Dreamers is an illuminating account of the ways people have imagined and interpreted Australia while struggling to understand this continent and striving to conquer its obstacles. It's an environmental history and a cultural history with an unmistakable sense of how, today, we are part of that continuing story.' (From the publisher's website.)