Seven playwrights. Fifteen plays. Short plays, but whole worlds contained in them. Huge windows into the minds and times of seven extraordinary writers for the theatre.These award-winning playwrights-Donna Abela, Vanessa Bates, Hilary Bell, Noëlle Janaczewska, Verity Laughton, Ned Manning and Catherine Zimdahl-collectively known as 7-ON, have collaborated over multiple projects since they banded together in 2005. Gathered here for the first time, Sharp Darts is a selection of some of 7-ON's best short works, chamber pieces for the stage and for audio. They take us from a lonely caravan on the edge of the ocean, to the footy oval of our teenage tragedies, a soulless suburban shopping mall, a futuristic island with its own language, a boat on a river in the deep deep dark, across a nostalgic backyard fence, inside the implosion of a dynasty, and beyond. These sharp, pointed portraits of Australia by some of our country's best playwrights are by turns dark, funny, surprising, moving and political, but above all inspiring in their vision and creativity.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.

At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.

Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete

Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.

Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.

We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.

Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.

Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.

Yes, you can access Sharp Darts by 7 ON,Donna Abela,Vanessa Bates,Hilary Bell,Noëlle Janaczewska in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Drama. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher

Year

eBook ISBN

Topic

Subtopic

Index

AURORA’S LAMENT

Donna Abela

Characters:

AURORA, migrant from the Philippines

LUKE, young working-class man

JOAN, Luke’s mother

TRUCKIE, truck driver

Set in a suburban house and street, an office block roof top, a windy south coast caravan park, a highway.

Aurora’s scenes are in the present. To emphasise her sense of isolation and exile, I suggest that only present tense sounds from the caravan park accompany her speeches. Luke and Joan’s scenes are all in the past.

Aurora’s Lament was written for audio. It could, however, also be staged.

This work is a free adaptation of the Old English poem The Wife’s Lament.

PROLOGUE

FX Interior. Caravan in a gale force wind.

AURORA: after weeks of oblique glancing

fitful sleep

daydreaming maybes

between floors

stairwell sex

two office block cash-in-hand cleaners

buckets spilt

rubber gloves off

reaching

touching

going up in the world

FX Exterior. Office block roof top. Street sounds from below.

LUKE: who knew we had keys to the roof?

with you

heights up here don’t scare me!

I’m steady

and I can see all the Sydney bridges

lit up all around us

with you

I can feel my heart plunge and play

without you

I’d know none of this!

FX Interior. Caravan in a gale force wind.

AURORA: you took me home

took me in

opened up your musty bedroom

and asked about my past

asked enough to know to

leave it be

just sleep-fall with me into a tired tangle

a shared breath

letting your bed

safe as houses

float us away

FX Exterior. Backyard. Magpies and lorikeets chirp.

LUKE: she lives in the city

with some nuns

near their convent

in a special house for just ladies

is Catholic like us

but she can’t stay there forever

she cooks real good

is heaps kind

saves all her pay almost

but she isn’t stingy

she brings late night cakes to work

evening tea she calls it

and never lets me pay

she’s from the Philippines

her name’s Aurora

you’ll really like her mum

FX Interior. A kettle comes to the boil and screams.

JOAN: Aurora

Luke’s gone

he left

didn’t say why

well before dawn

didn’t you hear him getting up?

getting dressed?

forgetting his phone?

dead to the world were you?

well I heard him

did something happen between you two?

It’s just that

when Luke stopped doing drugs

he stopped sneaking off

but he’s good now

he’s got you now

got no reason in the world

has he

to shoot through like this?

FX Interior. Caravan in a gale force wind.

AURORA: now

in a caravan park

in a grove of grief

on a coast I don’t know

I want your olive skin

your chiselled lips under my fingertips

not this punctured heart heaving

Why was I exiled?

What did I do?

FX Interior. Caravan in a gale force wind. The windows rattl...

Cover
The Playwrights
7-On Projects
Introduction
Sharp Darts
Appendix: First Productions
Copyright Details

About this book

Frequently asked questions

Information

Table of contents