LatinosUSA

Book Description and Praise

Following its successful premiere, we are proud to publish a chapbook edition of the script of Stephen House’s brilliant one man play, «The Ajoona Guesthouse’»

Stephen House is a masterful story teller and «The Ajoona Guesthouse» is a fast paced celebration of the lives of a wonderfully varied selection of humanity, living on their wits and charm, exploiting and exhibiting unending generosity, caring and careless, fragile and astonishingly strong. Based on the author’s lived experience in urban and rural India, «The Ajoona Guesthouse» is riveting: entertaining and deeply profound.

Stephen House’s first collection of poetry, real and unreal, is also published by in case of emergency press.

«Remarkable, original and deeply evocative writing»

THEATRE TRAVELS

«A rich potency and deep poetic magnitude»

RADIO ADELAIDE

Excerpt from the Book

Scene 1
MORNING LIGHT FADES UP / INDIAN MUSIC FADES DOWN
Rosy has lived at The Ajoona Guesthouse for a long time. “It must be twenty five or thirty years,” I say to Sydney, an old hippie about my age, who I’m sitting with on the outside step of The Ajoona, as Rosy scurries past us, enters the open front door, and heads up the inside stairs with a chubby Indian guy dressed in pure white cotton.
There is some kind of weird status that comes with arriving in India and never leaving, and Sydney (they call him that, for he’s from there), knows that as well as me.
And I’ve been hanging around The Ajoona on and off for decades too. But I don’t recall Rosy from here; our stays may not have coincided. Though I do remember her from Bombay in the late seventies when we both worked as film extras on Bollywood movies (I think to myself but can’t be bothered saying to Sydney). His mind is fixated on other things….

© Stephen House

You can purchase «The Ajoona Guesthouse» at In Case of Emergency Press HERE. It’s also available on Amazon.

Paperback

Author Biography

Stephen House is an award-winning playwright, poet and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced, many commissioned, and many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s won two Awgie Awards (Australian Writer’s Guild), an Adelaide Fringe Award, Rhonda Jancovich Poetry Award for Social Justice, Goolwa Poetry Cup, Feast Short Story Prize, and more. He’s been shortlisted for Lane Cove Literary Award, Overland Fair Australia Fiction Prize, Robyn Mathison Poetry Prize, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, Patrick White Playwright Award, Queensland Premier Drama Award, Greenroom Best Actor Award and more. He’s received Australia Council literature residencies to Ireland and Canada, and an India Asialink. He’s worked with many theatre companies. His chapbooks ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guesthouse’ monologue are published by ICOE Press Australia. He has performed his acclaimed monologues, ‘Appalling Behavior’, Almost Face to Face’ and ‘The Ajoona Guesthouse’ widely. His poems are published often. Stephen’s play, ‘Johnny Chico’ ran in Spain for 4 years.