Late at night. An empty street. A white man stops an Asian student. Fifty-six years later, another white man stops another student. Different men from different worlds. The same gnawing fear. Two plays. One story.

Four plays written between 1966 and 1968, years at the cusp of reform in Australia as a truly local form of contemporary theatre began to make itself felt with a sudden and spontaneous elevation of language.

Coralie Lansdowne refuses to settle down with one man. When she stays at an ex-lover's beach house, a series of visitors make her rethink her place in the world.

Still alarmingly relevant in the 21st century, Norm and Ahmed has earned its place as a classic of Australian theatre due to its timeless themes and the heightened language, performance style and concern with the behaviour of Australians, its origins and causes that characterised the New Wave.