Summer of the aliens: The year is 1962 and the world is worrying about the Cuban missile crisis, except for Lewis, a youth on the cusp of manhood, growing up in a Melbourne housing commission suburb. He is preoccupied with flying saucers, much to the disgust of his friend Brian who can think only of losing his virginity. This drama is a vivid and amusing evocation of a family and a neighbourhood whose increasingly strange behaviour Lewis is forced to interpret in the only way he can ... the aliens must be among us! Cosi: Set in a mental institution in 1970, Così€ is Louis Nowra's second semi-autobiographical play. Lewis has recently left university and takes up a job directing Mozart's Così€ Fan Tutte. Lewis the non-participant becomes emotionally involved with his actors' lives as his operatic production lurches forward and the anti-Vietnam protests take place in the streets outside. This much is true: A debt collector, a drag queen, a rogue chemist and a manic depressive walk into a pub. This play continues the story of Lewis from Summer of the Aliens and Cosi. Now he's older, a writer and lives in an inner city suburb filled with public housing, the underclass and characters who could only exist in such a place. He attends the 150 year old hotel, The Rising Sun, where he mixes with a core of customers, including an ice chemist, a once famous drag queen, a violent debt collector, a con man, a manic depressive and a fixer.
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