On the eve of the 1997 British handover of colonial Hong Kong to China, Fragments of Hong Kong is an intimate journey into the lives of six Hong Kong women whose lives are brought together and changed forever, by an unexpected and dramatic event.
Based on historical material, Fathom is set underwater off Broome in Western Australia, while an English deep-sea diver stages up to the surface. More specifically, the action takes place in the diver's fraying mind as he increasingly loses consciousness, due to 'the bends'.
It is 1913, and the White Australia Policy is tightening its grip. English navy divers have been brought in to replace their Asian counterparts. There are two worlds in this play: the profane and the sacred. The profane world is the one in which the diver's Malay tender is trying to stage him to the surface. It is a slow, suspended, lonely underwater world of counting, recounting and recriminating. There is also the sacred Otherworld in which a dragon appears, Oriental Sovereign of the Indian Ocean. This is the realm of pearl myths, magic and the unconscious, where linear attitudes to time do not apply, and things happen in defiance of natural laws and cycles. Although set in 1913, the play has resonances today - as Donna Abela has said, difference is at first an irritation, but pearls can only be produced when irritants are not expelled, but adapted to...
During the Tang Dynasty in the Kingdom of Wu, a certain duke, forced to marry a woman of the Miao, decides to employ the skills of his terrestrial genie to prepare a potion that when applied will enhance the lady's allure and so promote the necessary consummation of his marriage.
Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of all of China, lies dying, poisoned by mercury which he has taken in a misguided attempt to make himself immortal.
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Michael Gurr is one of Australia's leading playwrights. His plays include Sex Diary of an Infidel, Jerusalem and Crazy Brave. He has written poetry, screenplays and political commentary. Michael has also been a broadcaster for Radio National and for 774 ABC Melbourne.
Sundays 3pm, repeated Fridays 9pm
Presented by Jane Ulman
Sunday 24 August 2008
On the eve of the 1997 British handover of colonial Hong Kong to China, Fragments of Hong Kong is an intimate journey into the lives of six Hong Kong women whose lives are brought together and changed forever, by an unexpected and dramatic event.
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1pm AEST
Hindsight
New perspectives on well-known aspects of our past, and documenting stories long-ignored
