Past Productions

Careers for Attractive Ladies

Men and Women of Australia! The decision we will make for our country on the second of December is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.

Gough Whitlam, 1972.

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Careers for Attractive Ladies is a political bedroom farce set in London, December 1972. Anne is an Australian academic living with Pat, a painter and his partner Tim in North West London. The play focuses on Anne’s attempts to reconcile her developing feminist philosophy with her desire to be in a relationship with fellow expat Clive, and Pat’s hopes to find success as an artist while trying to protect mentally volatile Tim. When Anne discovers that Clive has started dating a younger woman, she impulsively starts a relationship with a man she meets at a train station. Pat takes Tim to see a psychiatrist in the hopes of curbing his addiction to drugs. On the night following the 1972 election of Gough Whitlam the characters gather to celebrate, and the underlying emotional tensions of the group are revealed.

The play is partially a feminist response to David Williamson’s misanthropic electoral drama Don’s Party, partially a reflection on the universality of youthful hope and political optimism.

TIM:     I can’t decide whether to fly or drown. But they say you need to know. You need to know whether to cut the string that pulls you up or the string that holds you down. But I say, fuck it. Fuck them. Cut them both.

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