Bill Reed

David Ehrenstein

Weeding in the Garden of Cinematic Delights

Playing the Third String

'... the Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of Cruelty are even more pervasively embodied in the plays of Alexander Buzo, Thomas Keneally and Bill Reed. In Buzo's case it is Absurdism which is especially apparent; in Keneally and Reed, Artaudian 'myth' and language-in-space... 'It was Reed in Burke's Company who pioneered Artaudian techniques in a play of stature. If the play is given imaginative production, it powerfully exemplifies one of Artaud's most famous metaphors. The figures on stage will suggest universal human victims burning at the stake, signaling through the flames.' Professor Dennis Carroll Contemporary Australian Theatre, Currency Press ----------------- This is a reprint of one of the most successful award-winning plays of Bill Reed. Over the years it has been performed both on the professional and amateur stages around Australia and overseas, and published by Heinemann Educational and also in Currency Press's 'Plays of the 60s'. Bill Reed has been involved in drama and publishing most of his existence in Australia, Britain, Canada and the Subcontinent. He has written nine professionally-produced plays and thirteen novels, including '1001 Lankan Nights, book 1 and 2'. He has won national awards for drama, short stories and novels. He now lives mostly in Sri Lanka.

Burke's Company

Ed: following is the Thomas-Nelson-Australia's 1977 blurb for the original edition, but here annotated, in italics, by the author for this reprint. 'Bill Reed's first novel is a celebration of the Australian language. 'Dogod' employs a language that uses our sounds, our national images, our landscapes and our slang to examine our rhythms and forms of speech. Leading back through the images-as-words of Joyce, Carroll, Thackeray and Shakespeare...' (I thought I was the one making with the jokes here?) '... here is a lament for the human condition as it is affected in modern times.' (I lamented a bit over the manuscript too. All I know was it was a neat pile of typescript pages but next morning it had paws marks all over it.) 'As a bone to a dog, so are we as toys to the gods. Hence Dog-god - a chaotic deity tossing and pouncing with bestial delight on His/Its favourite human plaything, Jelf. A walking disaster area, Jelf hardly needs Dogod's assistance to attract the natural and unnatural contempt of his associates as he lurches on his apocalyptic journey...' ( 'apocalyptic' is first-class; with his allotted dog pass, Jelf travels Economy) '... through Australia's visible and invisible landscapes.' ''Dogod' is both funny and profound. It is an examination of the comic-tragedy that is within each of us, and within our society. Its wit, its humour and its deeper purposes are brilliantly sustained. Its challenge is for you the reader.' (At least putting reader, singular, was spot on.) (NB: Also, there's nothing about the plot here. I remember distinctly that there was one - as in Jelf chasing Alyce chasing Quilty chasing Henry chasing a whole host of others or vice versa, while the Australian dream - really doggedly -- chases them all and keeps spoiling the plot like the real hound it is.) --------- About the author Bill Reed is a playwright, novelist and short-story wroughtist. He dangles, shaken, hanging from the pelt.

Dogod

Ed: following is the Thomas-Nelson-Australia’s 1977 blurb for the original edition, but here annotated, in italics, by the author for this reprint. ‘Bill Reed’s first novel is a celebration of the Australian language. ‘Dogod’ employs a language that uses our sounds, our national images, our landscapes and our slang to examine our rhythms and forms of speech. Leading back through the images-as-words of Joyce, Carroll, Thackeray and Shakespeare…’ (I thought I was the one making with the jokes here?) ‘… here is a lament for the human condition as it is affected in modern times.’ (I lamented a bit over the manuscript too. All I know was it was a neat pile of typescript pages but next morning it had paws marks all over it.) ‘As a bone to a dog, so are we as toys to the gods. Hence Dog-god – a chaotic deity tossing and pouncing with bestial delight on His/Its favourite human plaything, Jelf. A walking disaster area, Jelf hardly needs Dogod’s assistance to attract the natural and unnatural contempt of his associates as he lurches on his apocalyptic journey…’ ( ‘apocalyptic’ is first-class; with his allotted dog pass, Jelf travels Economy) ‘… through Australia’s visible and invisible landscapes.’ ‘’Dogod’ is both funny and profound. It is an examination of the comic-tragedy that is within each of us, and within our society. Its wit, its humour and its deeper purposes are brilliantly sustained. Its challenge is for you the reader.’ (At least putting reader, singular, was spot on.) (NB: Also, there’s nothing about the plot here. I remember distinctly that there was one – as in Jelf chasing Alyce chasing Quilty chasing Henry chasing a whole host of others or vice versa, while the Australian dream – really doggedly -- chases them all and keeps spoiling the plot like the real hound it is.) --------- About the author Bill Reed is a playwright, novelist and short-story wroughtist. He dangles, shaken, hanging from the pelt.

Blurb (Act I) PARSONS: I’m beginning to feel what his friends must have gone through when they were really seeing him off. The longer they wait, the more improbably it is that the bloody plane will ever leave. They mouth platitudes to each other about every man having the unimpeachable right to die at home. They don’t look into each other’s eyes knowing that not one of them has even bothered to tell the old boy about pipe dreams, tobacco smoke delusions. What they mean, really, is that they can’t wait any longer to get him off their hands. Blurb (Act 2) SURROUND MONOLOGUE: I didn’t care. I had my ticket in my hand in the plane. I would have had my ticket in my hand if they hadn’t taken it off me before I got on. That’s not the point. It’s as good as having your ticket in your hand when you’re sitting in the plane and they haven’t turfed you off because if they haven’t turfed you off then that means you must have had a ticket in your hand to be able to be there on the plane. And what I’ve got a right to expect is a bit of help from someone coming up and saying Siggie. Someone to come up and say my name. It’s a tremendous bit of help when someone remembers your name when they come up and say, Siggie. It’s terrible when someone comes up and opens his mouth to speak but says nothing. Blurb (Act 3) As a director, I was immediately impressed by the inherent theatricality of the play… of what constitutes a theatrical event. In this work that gives us not just a play but an experience of the struggle for creation. (Peter Batey, Artistic Director,

Mr Siggie Morrison with his Comb and Paper

Ron Edwards

A humorous narrative writtenn for nthe stage around Ron Edwards' best-selling book 'Australian Yarns'

Or, That Bloody Cow

Bullsh

We cannot blame Charles Dickens for not meeting our national Arts treasure Philip P. Pirip, but: go blame yr rottern Fate; whos flushs beat yr faces straights It could be said, though, Dickens did lend his major characters to Philip P. Pirip, although ‘lend’ might not be the best word; rather freedom opened the door to its wide-open spaces to allow them to escape and give vent to their grievances with their famous author, seeing as to how he never once mentioned the fabulous Surnevv diamonds that they once had their hands on and now wanted back at whatever cost to literature. Fabulous royalties might have been Charles Dickens’s lot but the diamonds were the only avenue for riches beyond creative writing for Miss Haversham, Estella, Mister Jaggers, Compeyson, Orlick, Biddy and a whole cast of actors and naked ‘actrusses’ who now demanded their jewel dues and were willing to kill for them. That escape fell to them after ‘Great Expectations’ found its way onto one of the heaps in the rubbish tip that was beloved of Pirip and in fact the location of his Tiphome, a dump in itself. From that fact, it was only a short fictional distance for the Dickens’s characters to land on Pirip’s lap with a vengeance. They came to lap but I stukk out tongue, ‘take thapt’! How our hero struggles with them might not be in any universal history books but, in artistic circles, it set the standard for the license to cull.

The Rhyming Cutlets of Pirip

John Tasker is a divided, but enjoined, man. Physically he is running from the law while hunting down his own father, just as his father used to track down the wild tuskers in Sri Lanka. At the same time, mentally, he is tracking down his murderous brother’s enemies, imaginably or not, with a deadly efficiency. Adding to his confusion is how his indolent lawyer’s job in the Attorney-General’s Department has itself suddenly become fraught with danger for his own personal safety. The resultant clash that erupts between his fervently-adopted Australia and his fervently-rejected Sri Lanka isn’t helping the mental chaos he is thrown into on an otherwise perfectly-acceptable day. One trouble is his state of being so enjoined. Through his own mind’s-eye he sees how his own milieu has been drawing him inevitably towards the cliff’s edge. Also through his-and-his-brother’s mind’s-eye he sees too much of the terrorizing worldwide Tamil organizations, and from a close-up much too gory. And through his-and-his-father’s mind’s-eye he sees no good nurture purpose to his existence, except the sighing and dying and the leavings from him. He can see how it’s all so willfully like his father’s wild snared tuskers endeavouring to escape, trying to drag the lines dragging the antler’d sambhur’s skulls through the hopelessly impossible bush. On top of all this, he has the living scaffold of the Sri Lankan Inspector Ekanayake now-and-ever looming over him. The Inspector doesn’t care a hoot about any mind’s-eye or mind’s-eyes, ‘bloody ****ing hell sorry’. He only cares for the hunt’s conclusion, and how John Tasker should know it. What is the Inspector doing in Canberra and asking so many pointed questions? What might he know about the shadowy and murderous Tasker twin brother with, apparently, the justified alias of Tusker? All John Tasker can now see is how his world and the manic world of his fearsome brother are being forced to converge so suddenly and so bizarrely. This is the first title in the ongoing Inspector Ekanayake series.

Tasker Tusker Tasker

“Bloom and blush hush-a-bye Australia’s land can. Take tea, I said. Don’t let them cut me up; bury me behind the mountains!, she cried. Drink tea, I said. Don’t let them cut me up but bury me behind the mountains, oh!, she said. Take tea, I tell her; drink tea now; it seeps down through the ages-oh. Tru. My Tru. Queenie. My Queen Truganinni that you are.” ------------------------------------ This is a collection of mainly nationally award-winning or highly-commended short stories.

Passing Strange

Sharon Nolan

A book of step-by-step lesson plans and photocopiable worksheets to help teachers design courses around the linguistic and business knowledge of their students. Placing emphasis on students' needs, it contains five main sections which provide a framework relevant to all students.

Business English Teacher's Resource Book

‘You have the stigmata,’ his grip firming when she tries to pull her hand away. ‘So have I. The scar across my eye, you see.’ -------------- Take a hermit, innocent, Christ-like, withdrawn, foreign-looking, non-English-speaking; then place him where the innocent are getting raped in an insular community. The result is awful predictability amid cries of ‘no more!’. But the rapes continue until the rapist is caught. Remove a hermit, innocent, Christ-like, withdrawn, foreign-looking, non-English-speaking, to the desolate mainland. Let the child of the rapist follow (why?) to the desolate mainland where the neighbours are a half-witted man and his fighting cock of a sister. Add a city detective on the pry, an abattoir, a sometime nightclub entertainer and her squatter husband. Minds on the edge rubbing against each other. Double, double, toil and trouble. In Me, the Old Man Bill Reed demonstrated his skill in portraying inhumanity and its often-insanity. Readers of Stigmata will not be disappointed with this follow-up work. ----------------- Originally a well-known and widely-performed and award-winning playwright, Bill Reed began writing fiction in his late thirties. Stigmata was his fourth novel and became the winner of the FAW Australian Natives Award in 1981. To date he has written thirteen novels, including 1001 Lankan Nights, books 1 and 2. He has worked as a publishing director and journalist in Australia and overseas, including Canada, Britain and the Subcontinent. During that time, he became Publishing Director of two major Australian publishing houses, but now mostly resides in Sri Lanka. ----------------- ‘…. It’s that interaction of innocence and inhumanity that so chills the blood… like certain Samuel Beckett novels, it could have left the reader feeling suicidal but, in fact, the final effect is one of driving elation’ Jill Neville, review, Sydney Morning Herald.

Stigmata

Mitch Peeke

This is the moving story of a young man who found himself along with thousands of his comrades in the nightmare of Japanese captivity. Unlike so many (it is said that one Commonwealth POW died for every sleeper laid) Bill lived to tell the tale. Indeed it is remarkable that this story has not been told before, so graphic are Bill's memories of the hardships and horrors. The book goes on to describe how the experiences of those years have affected his life since.

Experiences of a British Soldier on the Railway of Death

Lost Souls of the River Kwai

This is a rollicking play about one of the founding and/or foundling fathers of Western Australia… Thomas Peel, first cousin of the then British Prime Minister. He was the leader of the first organized group of settlers, but from the moment he arrived on western shores, he became, as it were, rooted to the spot, utterly unable to marshal himself to provide the leadership and employment to his hundreds of artisans, labourers and families. Indeed, for one whole paralyzing year, he couldn’t even move himself from the beach he landed on, even while the others were suffering from starvation, scurvy, dysentery and exposure. Finally, his people had to desert him as quite mad, and this included his own wife and daughter who saddled him with his dreaded mother-in-law and his wife’s love child. Still, even these two weren’t terrifying enough to push him off his beach and towards the dark heart of the then Australian interior… that physical opponent in which lineage allows for no special treatment and all better take the zinc cream with them. In that desolation, there weren’t even cricket practise pitches awaiting you. For thirty-six years, old Peel stood a lonely, haughty and solitary figure blinded to his failings. If that wasn’t enough, in old age, he was hauled before the magistrate for some decrepit and unspecified sexual misconduct against his haggard housekeeper. But, even regarding her, the rumour mill had as against his mother-in-law. Even today, his commemorative headstone has him buried on top of her in the same grave. Hopefully jokingly, or else this play should be a tragedy.

or, the Floundering of W.A.

Just Out of Your Ground

‘I not only write books. I am this book. The actual person or persons.’ ----------- After a flash flood in 1965 an elderly man became trapped down a Sydney parkland storm drain. Children discovered him but did not tell their parents. Instead they fed him a biscuit and a little water once a day for three weeks. When he was finally rescued, the flesh on his legs had become putrescent. He could not remember how long he had been down there. Bill Reed extends this situation to explore the interaction of innocence and inhumanity that is so prevalent in these days of random violence. Here, the old man, like so many others, has come to Australia with all the hopes of regeneration. But the sun has not shone on him very much and his brother and sister have disowned him. He has had to live in sordid hostels and to endure the barbs of a society that pays respect only to the fittest. As his minds drifts, the old man dreams he is back home in Belfast. He has got beyond the smell of his own rotting flesh and the fleas and rats. He no longer feels the cold or works up the desperation to plead with the children to get help. He floats mentally, waiting for the final water-rush of the coming last storm. And as he does so, the author uses himself as a character to the story, as one of the brutalisers, the sheer fact of writing about the old man in this terrible state possibly morally aligning him to the teasing, torturing children. Using Edward Nugent’s ‘real’ writings to give an authentic voice to the old man doesn’t help his frame of mind either. ---------------- Bill Reed has been involved in writing and publishing for most of his life, in Australia, Britain, Canada and the Subcontinent. He has had nine plays professionally staged and has written thirteen novels, including ‘1001 Lankan Nights’ books 1 and 2. He has won national awards in playwriting, short story and novel categories. He now resides in Sri Lanka. Edward Nugent was born in Belfast in 1900 and migrated to Australia after WW2, eventually living in a Salvation Army home in Adelaide where his major preoccupations were his manual typewriter and his old ‘fiddle’. He tragically died in a room fire in 1979, two days after receiving an advanced copy of this book. The quote above was his reaction.

Me, the Old Man

A Novel

In Lanka, the Australian Wi becomes the world champion in the number of kidnaps he suffers, while being hired out by his nabbers to anyone who wants to use a foreigner to do what he or she has always wanted to do and never been game to.

In a volume containing 14 original plays – including three shadow-play adaptions of Gogol, Morton and Runyon classics – the author resurrects a sadly neglected theatre genre – the shadow play combining traditional shadow techniques with normal acting to create ‘full-bodied’ mainstream plays.

14 Live-acted shadow plays for today

The Storyteller's Shadows

Surely you remember Wi, a name especially chosen to fit our attention spans? The world-record kidnappee, nabbee, swipee, snatchee, hoisted so many times even he’s lost count? (How about those three times in five minutes effort? That takes rare raw talent, that does.) I mean, if it wasn’t for our Wi how many of these yabbers, yarns, shaggy dogs and yank-your-chain whoppers could I trot out for you? Even getting across one’s not easy when it’s always against the wind from people laughing in your face. No, really, without our Wi, where would all the odd-balls be, drowning their sorrows by ingesting the food in Dominic’s Eatery, swallowing whole mouthfuls without a thought for their own safety? Would any plate get the Wi wipe and come out miraculously unscathed from what had been just laid upon it? Without Wi, how many screwballs could have hired him to do all they’ve always wanted to do? God knows, and the Talls say ‘God knows’ because, if you take it that God made him in His own image, then maybe you’ve stumbled across the one time God spoke too soon. Okay, setting that aside, coming to you is a cast of Lankan characters – and you’d cast too -- and barf, and burp – if you had some of Dominic’s food inside you, let’s not kid ourselves. Not all of us have cast-iron guts and can absorb what could canonize you if you kept it down. And our Wi can’t help being White, either. Did he ever ask for the hoists he’s had to suffer, or complained about the lack of duty-of-care his kidnappers have shown him -- their kidnappee, after all? No. All he asked was a hideaway high above the stars so bright. At least he got that. And, though having to watchfully wait, at least he received the epiphs, too. With the epiphs, he could epiphicatedly dream, so I guess he had something going for him. And let’s not forget he’s Talls recorded as having said, ‘Just let me know if I’m breathing too much and I’ll stop’. Hey, what kidnappee or country like Australia gets a kidnappee so considerate? Is he a peach of a pooch, or what? ---------------------- Bill Reed is an Australian novelist, playwright and short-story writer with national awards for all three. He now lives in both Australia and Sri Lanka.

Bill Reed

About

Books

Join the club