Philip Dean
Playwright
Playwright
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Philip was born in Queensland and is a graduate of the Queensland College of Art and the University of Queensland. One of Queensland's most popular playwrights, Philip's plays have been produced around Australia and a number of them have been published by Currency Press.
Philip's works include his adaptations of the popular Nick Earls novels ZIGZAG STREET, AFTER JANUARY and 48 SHADES OF BROWN, and the Opera SEEKING TRUE SOUTH (music by Stephen Leek) which was produced by Opera Queensland in 2001. Other works include FIRST ASYLUM, TALL GREEN STRANGER, BITING PAVLOV, FAMILY VALUES and DOWN AND OUT IN PARADISE.
His popular musical play LONG GONE LONESOME COWGIRLS first produced at La Boite Theatre in 1995, has toured Australia and was broadcast by ABC Radio.
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ProductionRoleCompany / Director
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AFTER JANUARYAlex has eighteen days until he finds out if he got into Arts Law, a week in Caloundra to sleep, swim and watch the cricket, and a mother with a keen interest in his sex life. Fortuna keeps bees, has a nose-ring, and a father who likes to do pottery in the nude. When this unlikely pair meet, the results are both hilarious and heartwarming. And for both of them it means that things will never be the same after January.
Adapted by Philip Dean from Nick Earls' award-winning novel, After January is a play for people of all ages about what happens when someone stops waiting for life to happen and begins instead to live it.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:2m, 2fPublication: Currency Press / www.currencypress.com.au -
48 SHADES OF BROWNDan is on a steep learning curve. It's not just that he's in his final year at school. When his parents go to Europe he moves in with his 22-year-old aunt Jacq and her eccentric friend Naomi. He should be concentrating on calculus and the fish-tank scene in Romeo + Juliet, But in a desperate bid to impress Naomi, Dan secretly starts memorising some more obscure information. Adapted from Nick Earls' award-winning novel, this is a gently comic tale of intimacy, ornithology and fresh pesto.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:2m, 2fPublication: Currency Press / www.currencypress.com.au
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LONG GONE LONESOME COWGIRLSA sad and funny two-hander about an unlikely friendship between two women in the not-so-swinging sixties of outback Queensland, united by their passion for Country and Western. Vicki is a housewife and Catholic, trapped in an existence that centres around the intermittent arrivals of her itinerant bulldozer-driving husband; Rae, a hard-living barmaid who has been abandoned on the roadside by her husband of five weeks, a rodeo competitor. Together they find the way towards independence, borne on the songs of Hank Williams and Patsy Kline.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:2fPublication: Currency Press / www.currencypress.com.au
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SEEKING TRUE SOUTHOpera Libretto: Philip Dean
Composer: Stephen Leek
In 1901 William Lu, preparing to return to China, is murdered on the wharf at Cairns. Caught between the living and the dead his restless ghost follows travellers through the century. Alberto who arrives from Italy in 1913 looking for work. Lucia who comes to marry Alberto in 1921. Catherine who travels halfway around the world in 1948 to reunite with the husband she scarcely knows and barely likes. Sophoan who escapes the killing fields of Cambodia in 1978. And Melita in transit in 1995. As the century closes Sophoan finds herself on Cairns wharf and hears William’s lamentations. He begs her to perform the rites that would allow him to continue his journey.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:4m, 4f -
FIRST ASYLUMClare has moved to Darwin to begin work in her first job as a junior officer with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. She soon moves into a ramshackle house on the outskirts of town which she shares with inveterate travelers, Peter and Toni. When Tu Dieu-Wei, an escaped Vietnamese asylum seeker arrives on their doorstep Clare has to decide whether to report her to the department or not.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:2m, 3f
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ZIGZAG STREETRichard Derrington is twenty-eight and single. More single than he'd like to be. More single than he'd expected to be, and he’s not coping terribly well. Since Anna trashed him six months ago and moved to Melbourne, he's been trying to find his life again. This play adaptation of Nick Earl’s award-winning novel covers six weeks of Richard's life in the house his grandparents built; six weeks of rumination, chaos, poor judgement, interpersonal clumsiness and, eventually, hope as he stumbles from one incident to another.ACTS:TwoLENGTH:CAST:2m, 3fPublication: Currency Press / www.currencypress.com.au
PRODUCTION
For information regarding school, community or professional productions of any of the plays on this site, contact us by email at writers@kublerauckland.com with full details of your proposed production.
For information regarding school, community or professional productions of any of the plays on this site, contact us by email at writers@kublerauckland.com with full details of your proposed production.
