Agelink Theatre

Agelink Theatre’s production of DEAR HEART has toured all over Australia and been published as a book by Allen & Unwin, so that although the letters full of love, courage and hope never reached their destination, they have now inspired thousands of people. DEAR HEART is a tribute to women waiting at home in wartime as well as to the endurance of young men behind barbed wire.

Agelink Theatre Inc is dedicated to producing theatre from oral histories.

Dear Heart

A HEART – RENDING, TRUE LOVE STORY OF A YOUNG COUPLE SEPARATED BY WAR. THEATRE INSPIRED BY UNOPENED LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

It’s not often in theatre that you get to play your own great aunt. When their aunt by marriage died, three sisters inherited a box full of her letters to her first husband, which were returned unopened after WWII. One of the sisters, Jenny Davis (of Agelink Theatre in Western Australia), adapted these letters into a play featuring her aunt, Wynne Brooks, waiting at home in London for news, and Wynne’s young husband, Mickey, languishing in a Japanese P.O.W camp in Java.

Jenny’s daughter, Rebecca Davis and her young husband, Stuart Halusz, play Wynne and Mickey in this poignant and uplifting play, featuring news broadcasts and music from WWII.

A true love story that transports us back in time to a world at war and reminds us that, as Wynne wrote, “If only everyone could love one other person as much as we love one another, then surely there’d be no wars, because when you truly love, nothing else matters”.

Here To Stay

UK premiere
Written by Jenny Davis
Directed by Jenny McNae

“UNLESS YOU HAVE HAD NO PASSPORT, NO BIRTH CERTIFICATE, ONLY A NUMBER IN A CAMP, YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW IT FEELS TO BE A NOBODY.”

“IT WAS SO STRANGE AT CHRISTMAS TO HEAR IN THE CAROLS ABOUT THE SNOW OF OUR HOMELAND, AND ALL AROUND US THE DUST AND THE HEAT!”

With laughter, tears and music, HERE TO STAY tells the stories of European migrants to Western Australia after WWII.

Based on interviews with “New Australians” from United Kingdom, Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania, HERE TO STAY describes their passage, both sad and comic, from displaced person’s camps to a new world in the sun.

Quotes

“The best theatre I have seen in years and I highly recommend this production to anyone who has been touched by love.” Riverina Leader

“Aglink Theatre is Australian theatre of the heart.”**** Tim Minchin – Winner 2005 Perrier Best Newcomer Award

“Dear Heart pulls at the heart strings.”, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney