My Brilliant Career & My Career Goes Bung

Two full-cast adaptations from the iconic Australian feminist novelist, Miles Franklin

These stunning dramatisations recount the life of an impassioned, ambitious Australian heroine, frustrated by rural bush life at the turn of the last century.

Born in 1879, writer Stella Miles Franklin grew up in poverty in the Australian outback, with limited education. She completed her first book at the age of just nineteen: the ironically titled My Brilliant Career was published to great success. She was immediately established as a bold new feminist voice in literature. The sequel, My Career Goes Bung, was written soon afterwards but not published until 45 years later.

My Brilliant Career follows the vivacious and rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn as she fights to break free of restrictive bush life. Growing up on her parents’ outback farm, Sybylla is desperate to read, write, sing and achieve great things. Yet her aspirations for a ‘brilliant career’ are persistently thwarted, first by the arduous demands of rural family life, and later by the shackles of a proposed conventional marriage to the wealthy Harold Beecham. With only her brilliant, conflicted mind to guide her, Sybylla is forced to define a life on her own terms.

Sybylla returns in My Career Goes Bung, leaving school and embarking on a career as an imitation autobiographer. She is overwhelmed when her book is a runaway success, but how will Sybylla cope with the fame and glamour of the Sydney literati? Friends, lovers, betrayal and a search for identity in a world pitted against her all play out in this moving and superbly performed dramatisation.

Nicola Quilter stars as Sylbylla in these two brilliant full-cast adaptations, which not only dramatise the struggles of the fiery, precocious protagonist but also shine a light on the emergent women’s rights movement and memorably evoke the intensity of youth.

Miles Franklin wrote and published a total of nineteen books across her lifetime, as well as working as an editor and women’s advocate. She endowed the Miles Franklin Award, a major literary award which has consolidated her legacy as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.

Cast and credits

My Brilliant Career
Written by Miles Franklin
Adapted by Lavinia Murray
Directed by Kate Rowland

Sybylla - Nicola Quilter
Harold - Stefan Dennis
Aunt Gussie/Mother - Judy Corwell
Frank - Louis Hilyer
Granny - Margaret Robertson,
Helen - Kate Blackham
Father/Uncle Julius - Darryl Forbes-Dawson
Mr McSwat - Terence Mann
Mrs McSwat - Eilis Hetherington
Child - Hugh Paterson
Child - Robert Lindsay
Child - Brenna Paterson
Pianists Brenna Paterson and David R Smith
First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24th November - 1st December 1996

My Career Goes Bung
Written by Miles Franklin
Adapted by Annie Caulfield
Directed by Marina Caldron
Music by Simon Cryer

Sybylla - Nicola Quilter
Ma - Peta Lilly
Pa - Danny Webb
Eusty/Derek- Karl Hansen
Mr Harris/Big Ears - David Sargent
Henry - Daniel O’Brady
Edmee - Mufrida Hayes
Mrs Crasterton - Richenda Carey
Gaddy - Gavin Muir
Goring - Andrew Wincott
First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 18th - 29th September 2000

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