

The twentieth century is drawing to a close, and there’s a play to put on – but the collaboration of a bunch of rag-tag youths is rarely straightforward.
The lead actor has stormed off in a huff, a cast member has been been caught up in a fist fight, while the director has fallen into a deep depression. Amidst the chaos, actress Veronika is determined the show must go on, even if she is facing her own inner romantic turmoil.
The Players takes us from a play rehearsal set in an orchard in Western Australia, to the heady experimental theatre world of Paris, to a foreign office in London, to the streets of Berlin, and to a school in post-independent East Timor, as we become immersed in the tangled tales of six unforgettable characters.
An Australian coming-of-age story, The Players is about the lives and loves of 20-somethings, across ten years and six countries, who meet in a university theatre group and never quite leave the drama behind.
LGBTQIA+ Themes
Contemporary, Literary, West Australian, Tragicomedy, Theatre Fiction
About The Author

Deborah Pike’s debut Novel, The Players, was released in Fremantle Press in 2024. She was born in Zimbabwe, moved to Hong Kong as a child and grew up in Perth. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and now teaches literature at Notre Dame, Sydney. She is a winner of an Australian Government Award for University Teaching.
Deborah has travelled widely, living in Paris for several years, where she held positions at Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, the OECD, the University of Paris VII and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She is also the author of an academic monograph The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald.
www.deborahpike.com
https://www.instagram.com/authordeborahjpike
https://www.facebook.com/authordeborahjpike
