Miles Franklin returns to Sydney in 1932 after years living in Chicago and London. She is still trying to get her books published, with little success. Frustrated by living with her elderly mother, the lack of money and feelings of failure, she struggles to reignite her fame as a twenty-year old when she wrote My Brilliant Career that captured the nation’s imagination.

Hope glimmers when she meets the mercurial publisher Inky Stephensen. They become friends who share a great love of their land. She joins Inky’s Yabber club of writers and ‘progressive thinkers’ passionate for Australians to create their own culture and break with Britain. As war gathers in Europe, the group segues into the fascist-leaning Australia First that looks to Hitler’s Germany as a model for strong leadership.

This event will run from 30 October to 17 November.

Event Dates & Times (runtime 90 mins, no interval)

• 30 Oct 2pm Preview
• 30 Oct 7pm Preview
• 31 Oct 11am
• 31 Oct 7pm
• 1 Nov 11am
• 2 Nov 7pm
• 3 Nov 2pm
• 3 Nov 7pm
• 5 Nov 11am
• 5 Nov 7pm
• 6 Nov 7pm
• 7 Nov 7pm
• 9 Nov 7pm
• 10 Nov 2pm
• 10 Nov 7pm
• 12 Nov 7pm
• 13 Nov 7pm
• 14 Nov 11am
• 14 Nov 7pm
• 16 Nov 7pm
• 17 Nov 2pm
• 17 Nov 7pm

Creatives Bios

Moira Blumenthal - Founder /  Director
Moira has directed and produced mainstream theatre internationally since 1988. Moira established and managed The Rosebank Theater in Johannesburg. When emigrating to Sydney in 1996 she worked as a Production Consultant a the Seymour Centre for 8 years where she conceived and produced The Best of Independent Theatre program for four season.

She directed and co-produced with Shalom; The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, based on the novels by Chaim Potok; Coming to See Aunt Sophie by Arthur Feinsod and You will not Play Wagner by Victor Gordon with Timothy Daly’s The Man in the Attic produced in 2018. Recent productions have included The God of Isaac in 2019 and Stories from the Violins of Hope in 2023.

During COVID, she produced a series of staged readings called Our Second Stage, which gave Australian playwrights a platform to present new work.

Other directing and producing credits include Falsettos, Oleanna, Ghetto, Into the Woods, Collected Stories, Amadeus, Skin Tight, Sweet Phoebe, Leaning Towards Infinity, Earl, The Shoehorn Sonata, It’s a Dad’s Thing, Mooi Street Moves, Pieter Dirk Uys’ Elections and Erections at the Sydney Opera House, Love,Loss and What I Wore, Bombshells, Address Unknown, A Woman in Black, and From Door to Door.

Moira has a Master of Arts in Cultural and Creative Practice from the University of Western Sydney.

Alice Spigelman 

Alice Spigelman was born in Hungary and moved to Sydney as a child in 1956. She has written plays about psychoanalysis, Virginia Woolf, Miles Franklin and about the burden carried by the children of Holocaust survivors titled A Kind of Reunion. Her biography Almost Full Circle on the international architect and proponent of modernism Harry Seidler was published by Brandl & Schlesinger. Her last book The Budapest Job explores what happens when atrocities are buried and perpetrators go unpunished, set in 1989 in post-communist Hungary and Sydney. She has reviewed books for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and given talks on subjects such as Catherine the Great, Harry Seidler and literary fiction and biography. She was a director of Australia for UNHCR and NIDA, Australia’s training institute for students in the performing arts, and was the Chair of Sculpture by the Sea, the international sculpture exhibition on the shores of Bondi and Cottesloe in Perth.

Timothy Daly - Dramaturg
Timothy Daly is one of Australia’s most internationally-produced playwrights, with a string of national and international productions to his credit. Actors such as Academy-Award winners Cate Blanchett, Jacki Weaver and Geoffrey Rush have appeared in his plays. His play Kafka Dances has won over a dozen national and international awards since its première, and is one of the most internationally-performed Australian plays of all time. His play The Man in the Attic was awarded Australia’s most prestigious award for a new play, the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award. It has been in Italy, Greece and at the Festival of Avignon in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018.. The play received its Australian première at the Eternity Theatre in Darlinghurst, directed by Moira Blumenthal. Timothy Daly has advised on hundreds of scripts in Australia, France and the USA.

This production is supported by Shalom