Jane Cafarella

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Jane is a former journalist whose plays have been performed both nationally and internationally, including in the UK, USA and Singapore, and have been translated into Turkish and Tamil.

e-baby, Jane’s first full-length play, premiered at Melbourne’s Chapel off Chapel in March 2015 to critical acclaim, with direction and dramaturgy by Anna McCrossin-Owen, and has had a production every year since:

2016, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, directed by Nadia Tass

2017, Tasmanian Theatre Company, directed by Anne Cordiner and Julie Waddington

2018, Cedarville University, Ohio, directed by Natalia Kirychuk

2019, Lyceum Club of Melbourne, (private viewing) directed by Rosemary Redston.

2019 (November), Aequitas Theatre Company, Brockley Jack Theatre, London, directed by Pamela Shermann

A rehearsed reading was also held at the So and So Arts Club in London in 2015, directed by Pamela Shermann.

e-baby Hobart was also nominated for Best Production in the Tasmanian Theatre Awards 2018 and Katie Robertson, who played Nellie, won for Best Performance (Female) in a Professional Production).

d-baby, Jane’s second full-length play, a drama/comedy about a donor-conceived teenager searching for her true identity, was recently named as a finalist in the 2018 international playwriting competition New Works of Merit based in New York.  

Jane’s short plays and comedies have been performed in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Singapore, where she lived with her husband from 2012-2016.

Supersnout, a one-act comedy, recently enjoyed a mini-tour of the Cotswolds in the UK, performed by Second Thoughts Drama Group in Stratford-upon-Avon at the Bear Pit and as the company’s entry in the Lighthorne Festival of One-Act Plays.

Uked! the first play-along ukulele musical premiered at the Guildford Music Hall in June 2019 and was a sell-out and critical success.  Another hugely successful three-day season followed in August at Newham near Hanging Rock.  Jane also plays the ukulele.

 “Karla’s journey in Uked! partly reflects my own. The humidity in Singapore affected my health and to avoid ending up in hospital, I had to spend most of my time indoors. Between writing plays, I took up the ukulele, learning on YouTube. After about six months, I took a class  - me and all the other eight-year-olds. 

"When I returned to Australia, I joined several clubs, and discovered that the ukulele was an instrument for social change, connecting people and communities through music. So I wrote a play about it.

 “The character of Karla was inspired by someone I met in a café in Richmond, who like our Karla, had never married, never had children and never had a career, and was caring for her aged mother.

 Like Karla, she was struggling to find her place in a changing world. The real Karla didn’t play the ukulele, but if she had, I’m sure most of her problems would have been solved

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