Cirrus@Austlit

'Jane (Ra Chapman) is a cocky Korean-Australian adoptee with a love of hairy white guys – the hairier and whiter the better. When her friends call her out for having “white fever”, she sets out on a journey to try and reprogram her libido but instead instigates the process of finding out who she really is.

'From hens’ nights to country weddings, moon crystals, “gotcha” days and a boxing ring, it’s a K-Pop-infused, action-packed, wild ride filled with revelations, surprises and a large helping of Asian pop culture.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'A somewhat autobiographical tale of Hmong parents, death and ghosts.   

'As Australia careened from deadly bushfires to the beginning of COVID-19, and as Hmong-Australian writer Michele Lee was working on Asian ghost TV shows, she rang her parents for 30 minutes each day.    

'Lee wanted to figure out how to talk to them about death: their death, the deaths they’ve endured here and in Laos, the Hmong perspective on death. In asking herself, ‘How do I let my parents die on their terms?’ Lee sought to reconcile vast emotional, cultural and geographical distances.    

'How Do I Let You Die? assembles an extraordinary team of Asian-Australian artists to weave together phone calls, Asian ghost tropes, Hmong horror stories, and the simple potency of an adult child coming to term with a parent’s eventual death.   

'As moments of acute and layered crisis bring mortality achingly close, this charming and tender work of theatre offers moments of humour and nuance, and moments of contradiction, to wonder on our approaches to this life and the next.' (Production summary) 

'A group of friends who shared a house in their younger days all communicate via an online video chat room during the COVID-19 shutdown. As lives and ambitions are suddenly put on hold without notice they struggle to come to terms with life in lockdown, dealing with everything from unemployment to a lack of toilet paper. Filmed in mid-June of 2020 and released in early July the show was actually written, filmed and edited under lockdown regulations.' (Production summary)

'"Ya used to get mugged around here. In the 70s, and the 80s. Even into the 90s. All types. The Aboriginals. The Serbians. Punks. Skips. You’d just punch on. People were tough around here. People were surviving."

'Set in the sanitised grunge of Collingwood, Single Ladies is a buddy story of lone women in the city told over the course of a day, from the award-winning writer of Going Down and Rice.

'Anne, Lilike and Rachel are from different generations and backgrounds and hold different allegiances to their neighbourhood, but a chance happening outside Coles sets them on the path to an improbable friendship.

'Single Ladies was developed through Red Stitch’s INK program.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'When a tomb in Vietnam is accidentally opened on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Festival, a vengeful spirit is unleashed, bringing the dead with him. As these spirits wreak havoc across the Vietnamese-Australian community in Melbourne, reclaiming lost loves and exacting revenge, young woman May Le (Văn-Davies) must rediscover her true heritage and accept her destiny to help bring balance to a community still traumatised by war.

'Hungry Ghosts reflects the extraordinary lived and spiritual stories of the Vietnamese community and explores the inherent trauma passed down from one generation to the next, and how notions of displacement impact human identity – long after the events themselves.'

Source: SBS (https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/2020/07/24/new-tv-drama-hungry-ghosts-four-night-special-event-coming-sbs). (Sighted: 20/08/2020).

'Sex and the millennial city

'Natalie Yang has just published her memoir, Banana Girl, a sexually explicit look at life as a twenty-something woman in millennial Australia. It isn’t the heart-warming migrant story that people expected. Nor is it a feminist call to arms. And it certainly isn’t on the best-seller lists.

'Going Down is the first full-length play for STC by Michele Lee, winner of the 2016 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award for her play Rice.

'Co-produced with Malthouse Theatre, it’s a brutally funny and frank examination of flawed characters failing at life in the most outrageous ways possible.

'Natalie, for one, has washed up on the shores of anonymity. But she isn’t going to wallow in existential crisis, she’s going to double down. Her next book, 100 Cocks in 100 Nights, could be the scandalous reboot her career needs. Or it could be a complete disaster. Only when she hits rock bottom will she find a way back up.

'"Look, let’s not talk about the Mekong. We’re all women here. Let’s talk about the female gaze. On sex. That’s my life. That’s what I write about." Natalie'

Source: STC.

A series of five plays by Australian playwrights, collected and performed as a single performance.

'Rice explores the business of global food production, namely rice, and women in business. There are two main characters. The central character is Nisha. She’s 28, a young and precocious corporate hotshot working as the Executive Officer of Golden Fields, Australia’s biggest rice company. She’s a second generation Indian. Yvette is 61, Chinese; she’s a cleaner in the Golden Fields building. Golden Fields is in Melbourne; Nisha and Yvette play all the other characters.

'Nisha is close to sealing a confidential contract with the Indian government, which would see Golden Fields taking over India’s public food distribution systems – rice is a major staple distributed through this system. This secret contract is worth billions. When a flood in one of the southern states in India looks to distract the government and delay the deal, Nisha decides that she needs to go to India to finalise the contract in person, taking with her Graeme, the CEO, and Tom, the marketing manager that Nisha has romantic feelings for.

'Yvette’s daughter, Sheree, is facing charges for a protest that resulted in the assault of the CEO of Coles.'

Source: Author's website (http://www.michelevanlee.com.au/current-projects/rice/) (Sighted: 12/07/2016)

'Michele Lee describes herself as the ‘fence-sitting’ middle child in a large Hmong-Australian family. Banana Girl is the explosive and poignant memoir of her rites of passage. Sexy, irreverent and nuanced, Lee isn’t afraid to lay herself and her relationships bare. Intimacy in an on-line world, sexual adventures and Gen Y yearnings, turning thirty as an Asian-Australian woman in inner city Melbourne, and the travails of becoming an artist, all capture Lee’s riveting gaze. The result is a book that is erotic, witty and revealing, a gutsy true story of self-acceptance that takes hold and won’t let go.' (Publisher's blurb)