James Manché

The Singer and the Swinger tells us as much about Australia's relationship to American pop culture as it does about Johnny O'Keefe's to Lee Gordon. Two different men brought together during the years 1953-63.

Sixteen-year-old Mars wants more from her life than just a fistful of flies which, to her, is a fistful of nothing. Stifled and dominated by her family, Mars just wants to be free. Denied relationships with the people who truly understand her, Mars battles her family on her own, and in her quest to be treated as a grown-up she gives her mother the courage to act and forces her father to make the choice of his life. A story about how a young girl finally finds the courage to have faith in herself.

In the early 1970s, a theatre collective - the Australian Performing Group - based itself in a building called the Pram Factory, now synonymous with the people and events that laid the groundwork for a renaissance in Australian culture. The Pram was a ‘scene’, a 24-hour happening, a radical alternative to the mainstream. Those who lived and worked at the Pram expected the world to come to them - and for a while it did. (The building was eventually demolished to make way for a supermarket.)

In the early 1970s, a theatre collective - the Australian Performing Group - based itself in a building called the Pram Factory, now synonymous with the people and events that laid the groundwork for a renaissance in Australian culture. The Pram was a ‘scene’, a 24-hour happening, a radical alternative to the mainstream. Those who lived and worked at the Pram expected the world to come to them - and for a while it did. (The building was eventually demolished to make way for a supermarket.)

In the early 1970s, a theatre collective - the Australian Performing Group - based itself in a building called the Pram Factory, now synonymous with the people and events that laid the groundwork for a renaissance in Australian culture. The Pram was a ‘scene’, a 24-hour happening, a radical alternative to the mainstream. Those who lived and worked at the Pram expected the world to come to them - and for a while it did. (The building was eventually demolished to make way for a supermarket.)