What does it mean to live in the space between departure and arrival? What does it mean to be part of a global diaspora- to understand 'belonging' as a practice, rather than a destination? Where is home, exactly? Tracing the lineages of disparate families resettled on these lands known as Australia, the plays in this collection seek to offer an answer. The long way home need not always be lonely.
In Tasnim Hossain's The Village, boy meets girl, grandmother meets grandmother. Over flowerbeds, kitchen tables and shared melodies, medicine student Jay and street busker Taylah discover that a love story doesn't always need to be romantic.
Looking for Alibrandi, adapted by Vidya Rajan from the novel by Melina Marchetta, returns to the Italian migrant community of twentieth-century Australia. Three generations of Alibrandi women are bound by a family curse. It's all fallen on seventeen-year-old Josie Alibrandi-already cursed by strict school nuns, racist peers and looming Year 12 exams-to break it.
In Jordan Shea's Malaca�ang Made Us, two Filipino families remain entwined by the forces of history. As another Marcos rises to power 36 years after his father's brutal legacy of martial law, young activist Leo confronts family secrets long buried by his father and his uncle: two boys who had stormed Malaca�ang Palace on the eve Ferdinand Marcos' regime fell. Winner of the 2024 Queensland Premier's Drama Award.
'[These playwrights] take the fragments of displacement and make from them a new kind of wholeness, one that honours where they come from while daring to dream beyond it.'- Suzy Wrong
Hossain, Tasnim: - Tasnim Hossain is a playwright, director and screenwriter.The Village premiered at Q Theatre at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre in 2023. She has been shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Award for her script Bombay Takeaway. She wrote and toured the solo works, Boys Light Up, Letters to John and Zak and Reefa's Bollywood Funeral, to festivals around Australia. She has written work for ATYP, Shopfront Youth Arts and Canberra Youth Theatre.From 2022 to 2025, she was Resident Director, followed by Associate Artist, at Melbourne Theatre Company, where she directed the Australian premieres of Never Have I Ever and English, which transferred to Canberra Theatre Centre after an extended season and was nominated for two Green Room Awards. She also directed I Wanna Be Yours for Melbourne Theatre Company's Education program, which toured regional Victoria. She developed and led Future Creatives, a development program for early career theatre designers from culturally diverse backgrounds.Tasnim has been an Artistic Associate at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Griffin Theatre Company's Studio Artist, and ATYP Resident Playwright. She was selected to be a part of Sydney Theatre Company-CAAP Directors' Initiative, as well as Melbourne Theatre Company's Women in Theatre program. She received the Women's Agenda 2022 Emerging Leader in Arts and Entertainment Award. She was a Theatre Network Australia's Leadershift program participant, as well as a Creative Australia Future Leader.
Rajan, Vidya: - An award-winning multidisciplinary artist, Vidya Rajan works in writing for stage and screen, contemporary performance, comedy and interactive media. She is a graduate of the VCA and a former writer-in-residence at the Malthouse. Vidya's practice is deeply interested in play, speculative fiction, colonial legacies and emergent technology; and her work is often described as contemporary, inventive and sharply hilarious. Her work has been programmed by spaces like Arts House, Now or Never, Sydney Festival, Darwin Festival, the Blue Room, Griffin, Malthouse and Belvoir; and she has acted in and written for shows on ABC, Netflix and SBS, amongst others. Recently, her projects have been shortlisted for the International New Media Prize, the Freeplay game awards, and acquired by ACMI, while her scriptwriting both won (The Feed SBS-Comedy Writing) and was nominated for (Looking for Alibrandi-Best Stage Adaptation) awards at the AWGIEs.
Shea, Jordan: - Jordan Shea is a writer, performer and teacher. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Theatre) and a Masters of Secondary Teaching (English and Drama) from the University of Notre Dame, and a Masters of Writing for Performance (Honours II) from the Victorian College of the Arts. As co-writer, he collaborated with Callan Purcell on Before the Sun Comes Up (NSW Department of Education) and Kenneth Moraleda on One Hour No Oil (KXT/kwento). He was a co-writer on The House at Boundary Road, Liverpool (Old 505 Theatre) and Intersection (ATYP). Additional credits include: Malacañang Made Us (Queensland Theatre), Diwa (Performing Lines & Australian Plays Transform) CAGE (Old 505 Theatre), Ate Lovia (kwento/Old Fitz) and Kasama Kita (Belvoir). Awards include: the 2025 Queensland Premier's Drama Award (Malacañang Made Us), and the 2024 Notre Dame Alumni Award. His play They're not listening won the Writing NSW Fellowship and was runner-up for the Australian Theatre Festival's New Play Award. Jordan's practice has been supported by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Create NSW and the City of Sydney. In 2025, he was the keynote speaker for Currency Press Festival of Playwrights, as well as making a triumphant return to performing in musical theatre, starring as Franz Liebkind in Joshua Robson Productions/Hayes Theatre's The Producers and Neglected Musicals' The Witches of Eastwick as Clyde Gabriel. Jordan lives on Wangal Country (Ashfield) and is a proud Filipino-Australian.
