image of person or book cover 5056691716761469010.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Rising Water single work   drama   - Two acts
Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Rising Water
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.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Living aboard neighbouring boats in a crowded marina, Col, Baxter and Jackie are middle-aged fringe-dwellers. Each of them nurses secret wounds and anxieties, and although their vessels are ocean-going craft, none seems likely to ever leave the safe confines of the harbour. They are hiding from the world behind and beyond.

On Australia Day, drunk, lost and angry, a young English backpacker called Dee turns up on the jetty and her arrival unleashes chaos. Suddenly no secret is safe, nothing is fixed. As the nation celebrates, the cosy fantasy of safety from the past is blown open in a funny, bitter torrent of loose talk.' (Publisher's blurb)

Production Details

  • First produced by the Black Swan State Theatre Company, Perth, Western Australia, 25 June-17 July 2011, directed by Kate Cherry. Produced at Albany, Western Australia, 22-23 July 2011 and in Melbourne 9 August - 10 September 2011.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Balmain, Glebe - Leichhardt - Balmain area, Sydney Inner West, Sydney, New South Wales,: Ligature , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 5056691716761469010.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 76p.p.
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Three Plays : Rising Water, Signs of Life, Shrine Tim Winton , Melbourne : Penguin , 2022 24431850 2022 selected work drama

    'Marked by Winton’s signature ear for dialogue, these are three searing plays about survival, mourning, and the remarkable gift of redemption.

    'Winton’s first play, Rising Water, sees middle-aged fringe-dwellers Col, Baxter and Jackie living aboard neighbouring boats in a crowded marina. Each of them nurses secret wounds and anxieties, and although their vessels are ocean-going craft, none seems likely to ever leave the safe confines of the harbour. They are hiding from the world behind and beyond.
    'Signs of Life marks the return of Georgie Jutland and Lu Fox from Winton’s Miles Franklin–winning novel Dirt Music. Alone in her farmhouse at night, Georgie hears noises out on the highway – car doors, voices, weeping. Then a figure emerges from the darkness. A man seeking help. His sister is out in the car, screaming. Can Georgie trust them? And what to do when guests settle in and show no inclination of moving on?
    'In Shrine, Adam and Mary Mansfield are struggling to come to terms with their son’s death in a car crash. Adam has sold his winery, and his trips to the beach house have become more frequent – anything to avoid Mary’s smouldering grief. One day a young woman arrives at his door. She has something to share: the story of his son’s final hours.' (Publication summary)

         Melbourne : Penguin , 2022
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Works about this Work

Australian Literature, Risk, and the Global Climate Challenge Graham Huggan , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literature, Interpretation, Theory , vol. 26 no. 2 2015; (p. 85-105) 'Envision two scenarios, the one real the other imagined, both played out in Australia's southeast regions. In the imagined one, taken from George Turner's post-apocalyptic story “The Fittest,” the year is 2035 and parts of Melbourne are under water. The embattled city is divided into two camps, the Swill and the Sweet, who make up nine tenths and one tenth of the population, respectively. The Swill live in run-down tenement blocks in the low-lying southern and western areas of the city, which are at the mercy of rising sea levels caused by the catastrophic melting of the ice caps. The Sweet look down on the Swill, both literally and metaphorically, from their privileged vantage on the higher levels. The Swill, meanwhile, are left to fend for themselves in a daily and brutal struggle for survival: jobless, hungry, they are little more than predatory animals, a racially stigmatized underclass equivalent to Asia's barbarian hordes (Maxwell 20–21; Morgan). In the real one, the year is 2013 and parts of Tasmania have been transformed into an inferno. A devastating heatwave covering most of the southern and eastern parts of Australia has caused wildfires to spread, with its largest offshore island bearing the brunt of it. There are few deaths, but hundreds of people are displaced and irreparable damage is done to thousands of hectares of land and property. Media commentators return to that most obdurate if readily reversible of clichés, Australia as un/lucky country, linking the sins of commission (the perils of boom-and-bust economics) to those of omission (the price paid for ecological neglect).1 Spoiling as always for a fight, the British environmental campaigner George Monbiot sanctimoniously reminds his antipodean cousins that they burn twice as much carbon as his own countrymen, and that the history of Australia, framed as a “land of opportunity in which progress is limited only by the rate at which natural resources can be extracted,” doubles as a cautionary tale of what happens when “climate change clashes with a story of great cultural power.” Lest the moral of the story be unclear, Monbiot flourishingly underscores it: “Australia's new weather,” he says, “demands a new politics, a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.”' (Author's introduction)
Tim Winton Writes for the Stage Christy Hopwood , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Voice , 15 August - 11 September vol. 7 no. 8 2011;
Struggling to Stay Afloat Cameron Woodhead , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 11 August 2011; (p. 17)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
In the Depths of Winton Kylie Northover , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 30 July 2011; (p. 18) The Sydney Morning Herald , 30-31 July 2011; (p. 10-11)
Nuanced Portrait of a Bittersweet Relationship Victoria Laurie , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian , 5 July 2011; (p. 15)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
Words Put Winton in Rising Water Matthew Westwood , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian , 9 June 2011; (p. 17)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
Drama Gets Its Bearings Victoria Laurie , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian , 1 July 2011; (p. 18)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
Nuanced Portrait of a Bittersweet Relationship Victoria Laurie , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian , 5 July 2011; (p. 15)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
Struggling to Stay Afloat Cameron Woodhead , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 11 August 2011; (p. 17)
— Review of Rising Water Tim Winton , 2012 single work drama
Sink or Swim Mark Naglazas , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 4 June 2011; (p. 10-13)
In the Depths of Winton Kylie Northover , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 30 July 2011; (p. 18) The Sydney Morning Herald , 30-31 July 2011; (p. 10-11)
Tim Winton Writes for the Stage Christy Hopwood , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: Voice , 15 August - 11 September vol. 7 no. 8 2011;
Australian Literature, Risk, and the Global Climate Challenge Graham Huggan , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literature, Interpretation, Theory , vol. 26 no. 2 2015; (p. 85-105) 'Envision two scenarios, the one real the other imagined, both played out in Australia's southeast regions. In the imagined one, taken from George Turner's post-apocalyptic story “The Fittest,” the year is 2035 and parts of Melbourne are under water. The embattled city is divided into two camps, the Swill and the Sweet, who make up nine tenths and one tenth of the population, respectively. The Swill live in run-down tenement blocks in the low-lying southern and western areas of the city, which are at the mercy of rising sea levels caused by the catastrophic melting of the ice caps. The Sweet look down on the Swill, both literally and metaphorically, from their privileged vantage on the higher levels. The Swill, meanwhile, are left to fend for themselves in a daily and brutal struggle for survival: jobless, hungry, they are little more than predatory animals, a racially stigmatized underclass equivalent to Asia's barbarian hordes (Maxwell 20–21; Morgan). In the real one, the year is 2013 and parts of Tasmania have been transformed into an inferno. A devastating heatwave covering most of the southern and eastern parts of Australia has caused wildfires to spread, with its largest offshore island bearing the brunt of it. There are few deaths, but hundreds of people are displaced and irreparable damage is done to thousands of hectares of land and property. Media commentators return to that most obdurate if readily reversible of clichés, Australia as un/lucky country, linking the sins of commission (the perils of boom-and-bust economics) to those of omission (the price paid for ecological neglect).1 Spoiling as always for a fight, the British environmental campaigner George Monbiot sanctimoniously reminds his antipodean cousins that they burn twice as much carbon as his own countrymen, and that the history of Australia, framed as a “land of opportunity in which progress is limited only by the rate at which natural resources can be extracted,” doubles as a cautionary tale of what happens when “climate change clashes with a story of great cultural power.” Lest the moral of the story be unclear, Monbiot flourishingly underscores it: “Australia's new weather,” he says, “demands a new politics, a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.”' (Author's introduction)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (8)
Last amended 18 Aug 2016 15:32:26
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Fremantle, Fremantle area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X