y separately published work icon Pinball single work   drama   - Two acts
Issue Details: First known date: 1981... 1981 Pinball
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Alison Lyssa describes the play thus: "In Pinball, a lesbian mother, whose name is Theenie, is threatened with the loss of custody of her much loved child unless she gives up her lover and conforms to her family's idea of what she ought to be, a compliant, dutiful daughter and wife. Her father, her brother and the judge Solomon regard Theenie's search for her own truth as so dangerous they draw on centuries of tradition to try to control the language she uses and the very ground she walks on. Theenie has a very different fate from such famous female figures of myth and theatre as Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia whose father sacrifices her so that he can get a fair wind to speed his army over the water to Troy, or Shakespeare's Ophelia, who dies because her father, King Lear, refuses to listen to the truth that she expresses. In Pinball, Theenie is not isolated from a supportive community. As well as the love of Axis, the pivot of her world, Theenie has the support of the women's movement, represented on stage by Vandalope, an anarcho-lesbian bicyclist whose name is a mixture of vandalism and hope. In court Vandalope and Theenie challenge Solomon's powerful prejudices with counter images of wit, wisdom, dignity, selfhood and love." 

Source: https://www.academia.edu/4969482/On_the_Writing_of_Pinball  Relating to the 2014 production by Duck Duck Goose Theatre for Mardi Gras.

Production Details

  • First produced by the Nimrod Street Theatre Co., Downstairs Theatre, Sydney, 9 September 1981.
  • Produced by Gavin Roach of Duck Duck Goose Theatre, at the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst, as part of Mardi Gras, Sydney, 11-28 February 2014.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 1981
      .
      Extent: 61 leavesp.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • Typescript (photocopy).
      • Prologue, two acts.
      • Handwritten copyright on title page of original. Copyright 1981.

      Holdings

      Held at: University of Queensland University of Queensland Library Fryer Library
      Local Id: H1048

Works about this Work

'A Lifelong Journey' : Alison Lyssa Rachel Fensham (interviewer), 1997 single work interview
— Appears in: Performing Women/ Performing Feminisms : Interviews with International Women Playwrights 1997; (p. 89-92)
As well as commenting on her own plays, Alison Lyssa describes a theatre project with Cantonese-speaking women in western Sydney in the 1980s.
y separately published work icon Alison Lyssa Speaks Rosemary Curb (interviewer), Z125659 1986 single work interview
'A Lifelong Journey' : Alison Lyssa Rachel Fensham (interviewer), 1997 single work interview
— Appears in: Performing Women/ Performing Feminisms : Interviews with International Women Playwrights 1997; (p. 89-92)
As well as commenting on her own plays, Alison Lyssa describes a theatre project with Cantonese-speaking women in western Sydney in the 1980s.
y separately published work icon Alison Lyssa Speaks Rosemary Curb (interviewer), Z125659 1986 single work interview
Last amended 5 Nov 2021 23:53:41
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