image of person or book cover 4919590908216699832.jpg
This image has been sourced from UQ website
Stephen Carleton Stephen Carleton i(A83147 works by)
Born: Established: 1968 Atherton, Atherton area, Mareeba - Atherton - Ravenshoe area, Ingham - Cairns area, Queensland, ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Review : Patrick White's Theatre : Australian Modernism on Stage, 1960-2018 Stephen Carleton , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 84 2024; (p. 342-348)

— Review of Patrick White's Theatre : Australian Modernism on Stage, 1960-2018 Denise Varney , 2021 multi chapter work criticism
'David Marr’s Patrick White: A Life was one of those foundational, al-most talismanic, books for me. I discovered White in the first year of my Drama major at university, and that book was the go-to resource. It followed me everywhere after graduation and beyond. Emerging playwrights didn’t have mentorships available to them in any formal sense in those days, and Marr’s tome stood in for the playwriting el-der I needed. The cover of the book has candlewax, red wine glass stains, coffee cup marks and cockroach poo over it from sitting on bedside tables in share houses in Melbourne, then Darwin, then Bris-bane. It is deeply used, and deeply cherished.' (Introduction)
1 Chris Mead. Wondrous Strange : Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays Stephen Carleton , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , 10 August vol. 23 no. 1 2023;

— Review of Wondrous Strange : Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays Chris Mead , 2022 multi chapter work criticism
'In this short Currency title, a collection of seven essays or “thoughts” on playmaking, Chris Mead states in his introduction that he is offering a ruminative alternative to “how-to” playwriting guides that err toward the reductive, the formulaic, and the conservative. “The following essays,” he explains, “are an attempt to chart a course between the chaos of competing theories and divergent practices, and oversimplifications of some how-to guides” (xiv).'(Introduction)
1 1 y separately published work icon Contemporary Australian Playwriting : Re-visioning the Nation on the Mainstage Chris Hay , Stephen Carleton , London : Routledge , 2022 25272429 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'Contemporary Australian Playwriting provides a thorough and accessible overview of the diverse and exciting new directions that Australian Playwriting is taking in the twenty-first century.

'In 2007, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was William Shakespeare. In 2019, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman. This book explores what has happened both on stage and off to generate this remarkable change. As writers of colour, queer writers, and gender diverse writers are produced on the mainstage in larger numbers, they bring new critical directions to the twenty-first century Australian stage. At a politically turbulent time when national identity is fractured, this book examines the ways in which Australia’s leading playwrights have interrogated, problematised, and tried to make sense of the nation. Tracing contemporary trends, the book takes a thematic approach to the re-evaluation of the nation that is dramatized in key Australian plays.

'Each chapter is accompanied by a duologue between two of the playwrights whose work has been analysed, to provide a dual perspective of theory and practice.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Brutal Utopias Stephen Carleton , 2022 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2022 23456568 2022 single work drama

''I’m not abandoning my principles; I’m coming here to apply them.'

'1971. The height of the Cold War. The Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia is opening up to Western tourism after breaking away from the Soviet Bloc. Branislav and Valentina Radovic have been compelled to design a hotel complex for the government after forging a reputation for designing ultra-modern concrete structures, triggering their lofty utopian political and architectural ideals.

'Present-day. New York City. A talented Australian environmental architect, Natalia Silverman, has been asked to join the team designing New York’s ‘Big U’ – the sea wall mitigation project that will cradle Manhattan’s financial district from rising sea levels. But building a sea wall around the world’s iconic home of big business, is forcing her to ask herself; is she really saving New York, or just working for the bad guys?

'Brutal Utopias examines the intersection between lofty ideals and realpolitik, and the search for perfection in a world that is tilting imminently toward chaos.'

Source: Playlab Theatre.

1 y separately published work icon New Babylon Stephen Carleton , 2020 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2021 20902956 2020 single work drama

'Take a cruise to the other side of the apocalypse!

'A collection of some of the world’s wealthiest ‘preppers’ are cruising to New Babylon to escape climate catastrophe. If environmental cataclysm is getting you down, join us on board!

'All is not necessarily what it may seem on this voyage to the promised land, but remember whatever happens: we’re all in this together!'

Source: Brown's Mart.

1 y separately published work icon Limbo Stephen Carleton , 2020 Australia : PlayWriting Australia , 2020 19659439 2020 single work drama
1 1 Joh for PM Stephen Carleton , Paul Hodge (composer), 2017 single work musical theatre humour

'Joh for PM launches this July at Brisbane Powerhouse to take Queenslanders on a musical romp through the life of ex-Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the Queensland icon who set state politics alight.

'The musical comedy satirizes the bizarre events that occurred in Australian politics during the Bjelke-Petersen reign. Set at a fundraiser for Joh in 1987, audiences will want to sing along to original tunes such as Pumpkin Scone Diplomacy, Feeding the Chooks and the most catchy political song ever, Joh for PM.

'Bjelke Petersen was Queensland’s longest serving, longest-lived, most quotable Premier. He was one of the best-known and most controversial political figures of 20th century Australia. Award-winning playwright Stephen Carleton (The Narcissist, The Turquoise Elephant, Bastard Territory) and Broadway composer Paul Hodge (Clinton: The Musical) have taken inspiration from these historic events to create one of the best musicals to come out of Queensland.

'This toe-tapping, hilarious cautionary tale will resonate with Queenslanders who lived through the Joh era, as well as those who are yet to learn about this colourful time in our State’s history. Join us for a laugh, a joke and a bloody good time. ' (Production summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon Imagined Landscapes : Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives Jane Stadler , Peta Mitchell , Stephen Carleton , Bloomington : Indiana University Press , 2015 9359844 2015 selected work criticism

'Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia’s cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape. It offers fresh insights on cultural topography and spatial history by examining the technical and conceptual challenges of georeferencing fictional and fictionalized places in narratives. Among the items discussed are Wake in Fright, a novel by Kenneth Cook, adapted iconically to the screen and recently onto the stage; the Australian North as a mythic space; spatial and temporal narrative shifts in retellings of the story of Alexander Pearce, a convict who gained notoriety for resorting to cannibalism after escaping from a remote Tasmanian penal colony; travel narratives and road movies set in Western Australia; and the challenges and spatial politics of mapping spaces for which there are no coordinates.' (Publication summary)

1 Correspondence Stephen Carleton , 2015 single work correspondence
— Appears in: The Monthly , December - January no. 118 2015-2016; (p. 81)
1 Australian Gothic Drama : Mapping a Nation's Trauma from Convicts to the Stolen Generation Stephen Carleton , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , June no. 66 2015; (p. 11-39)
1 y separately published work icon Bastard Territory Stephen Carleton , 2015 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2016 8902697 2015 single work drama

'Russell’s ghosts were kind of at rest. He was at peace with it all, even the fact that he didn't know who his biological father was. His mother, Lois, disappeared when he was eight, leaving him to be raised by Neville, a stalwart of the no-nonsense Regional Right.

'It’s Darwin, 2001, and Russell and his partner Alistair have transformed Russell’s childhood home into the ‘Tectonic Plate’; ‘hip urban café and art gallery by day, queer cabaret dive by night’.

'When three separate events over the course of two weeks start to churn things up, the ghosts from Russell’s past begin to intrude on his present and he embarks on a quest to determine his identity.

'The search transports him back to the bohemian world of his childhood; Darwin, 1975, and beyond to his conception; PNG, 1967, where bored ex-TAA hostie, Lois, has tired of Neville’s conservatism and joined the ‘Moresby Arts Theatre’, where she soon starts courting liaisons with members of the community positioned more dangerously at its anarchic edges.

'To a soundtrack of Suzi Quatro, Shirley Bassey and Nana Mouskouri, Russell pieces together the events leading to that fateful night when his favourite Abba record was broken and everything else fell apart.' (Production summary)

1 3 y separately published work icon The Turquoise Elephant Stephen Carleton , 2015 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2016 8677531 2015 single work drama

The Turquoise Elephant is a bitingly-funny absurdist work, depicting the chaos of a future world rapidly succumbing to climate change. As the environmental disaster unfolds, three generations of women from a privileged political family watch on - from their hermetically sealed, temperature controlled home. But just how safe are they? It's a play about contrasts: grotesque privilege and dispossession, sanity and insanity, hope and fatalism.

Source: ABC Radio National. Interview with Stephen Carleton available here.

1 Australian Gothic : Theatre and the Northern Turn Stephen Carleton , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 27 no. 2 2012; (p. 51-67)
'This essay traces the recent scholarship on the prominence of a Gothic sensibility in Australian literary and cinema cultures, and argues that theatre has somehow been left out of this discussion of the genre...'(From author's introduction)
1 The Gate Crasher Stephen Carleton , 2011 single work drama
1 Cinema and the Australian North Stephen Carleton , 2009 single work essay
— Appears in: Metro Magazine , December no. 163 2009; (p. 50-55)
The essay reviews the film "Australia," starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, directed by Baz Luhrmann.
1 Darwin as the Frontier Capital: Theatrical Depictions of City Space in the North Stephen Carleton , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 52 2008; (p. 52-68)
Carleton explores the notion of Darwin as a contemporary frontier capital using theatre to understand the ways in which this troping is articulated and performed.
1 Power To the People Stephen Carleton , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9 - 10 February 2008; (p. 10)
1 10 y separately published work icon The Narcissist Stephen Carleton , 2007 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2007 Z1356453 2007 single work drama satire (taught in 4 units) 'Xavier is a narcissist. He is a jaded, single, urban professional living in New Farm for whom middle age looms, and the prospects of finding a psycho sexually well-adjusted partner are beginning to fade. Enter Bronwyn, an equally committed boozy malcontent and his best friend, who challenges Xavier to a duel - "Six weeks to bag a man! No ifs, no buts, no limits, no boundaries and no rules!" The gloves are off - whoever scores first, wins!' Source: http://www.theprogram.net.au/ (Sighted 15/02/2007).
1 5 y separately published work icon Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset Stephen Carleton , 2004 Fortitude Valley : Playlab , 2006 Z1197759 2004 single work drama (taught in 3 units)

'It is 1899 and only the resolve of Lady Constance Drinkwater has kept the Far North Queensland settlement of Somerset from crumbling. Beset by storms, ill-luck and a mysterious disease that has killed all but two of Constance’s children, it is the arrival of strangers - anthropologist Professor Cornelius Crabbe and his companion, Mr Hop Lee - that sets in motion the final catastrophic days of Somerset.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 1 Surviving Jonah Salt Surviving Jonah Salt : A Northern Myth Kathryn Ash , Stephen Carleton , Gail Evans , Anne Harris , 2004 single work drama
— Appears in: From the Edge : Two Plays from Northern Australia. 2004; (p. 135-218) The Australian Play Bundle # 1 2013;
'Three crazy women and one angry young man get lost and found in the desert of the Northern Territory. This is a brutal but beautiful, haunting but hilarious road-trpi into the Never-Never. Ruby goes on the run from Darwin and is hitch-hiking to freedom. Trish's husband has mysteriously disappeared from their roadside store in the Daintree, so Trish takes off in the ute. Jonah has been dumped in the desert by his alcoholic mother and her lunatic boyfriend. Patricia is an aging ex-hooker, heading North on the night bus from Brisbane to Three Ways.' http://www.jute.com.au (Sighted 13/08/04)
X