In 2016, for example, he won the City of Newcastle Drama Award (CONDA) for Best New Play or Musical Written for a Newcastle Company with his musical comedy Saviour's Day, which had a Darwin postman trying to deliver Christmas cards to people in and around the town after it was hit by the destructive Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day in 1974.

The show's name was the title of a Cliff Richard song that was used to help tell the story, with the settings including a mission station near Darwin where the very different backgrounds of refugees from many countries came out through their festive clothes and songs.

This year's Theo Rule Christmas show, I'll Be Home for Christmas, is set against the drowning of then prime minister Harold Holt. His body was never found after he went for a swim on December 17, 1967, at Victoria's Cheviot Beach near his Toorak holiday home.

Holt had been researching what Christmas meant in Australia when preparing his end-of-year address.

He'd gone to the holiday house, while his wife, Zara, stayed in Canberra to finalise preparations for the prime minister's annual Christmas party.

Some of his colleagues had the view that he'd also gone to Toorak because the woman they knew to be his mistress, Marjorie Gillespie, lived there.

I'll Be Home for Christmas - A Family Musical is being staged by the Mayfield West-based Grainery Theatre at Newcastle's Civic Theatre, with shows on December 21 and 22.

It has 58 cast members, aged from eight to the 60s, with the actors, who play a diverse range of characters, wearing colourful 1960s clothes.

Rule has included Christmas songs as well as numbers from that era that were hits for groups including The Seekers, Bee Gees, and The Beach Boys, with the latter band's lively Good Vibrations widely acclaimed as one of the finest and most important works of the rock era.

Rule, who is the show's director, says that a lot of the best and most popular musicals have been set against dark backgrounds, including The Sound of Music, which looks at the impact of the Nazi invasion of Austria on the country's people.

"Holt's popularity had gone down, so he was trying to work on a Christmas speech that would bring out what Christmas means to Australia," Rule said.

"He loved swimming and he was a diver as well, and had discovered on the bay's floor part of the wreck of the steel ship, the Cheviot, that gave the bay its name.

"His finding is stored in the Melbourne Museum," he said.

The show's characters include members of the Jesus Movement, a 1960s hippy group who tried to promote recognition of Jesus.

Rule said that a sniper had fired a gun at Holt in his parliament house office, but, despite that, he wouldn't agree to having a bodyguard.

"His wife Zara thought that was to do with what was happening in his private life," he said.

The songs in I'll Be Home for Christmas are accompanied by 12-piece band conducted by the show's musical director, Okke Klassen.

The production's cast is headed by Jared Mainey, as Harold Holt, Hannah Buck, as Zara Holt, Lyndon Baker, as Holt's press secretary, Tony Eggleton, and Brea Jones, as Marjorie Gillespie.

I'll Be Home for Christmas, which runs for 90 minutes, has performances on Saturday, December 21, at 7pm, and on Sunday, December 22, at 4pm and 7pm.

All tickets for the Civic show are $10.

Book through the Civic Theatre, 4929 1977.

THE 2020 season of Micro Theatre, an event that has programs of short plays mainly written by Hunter people, will be staged between May 21 and 30, with awards for the Best Play and other categories presented on May 31.

People are invited to submit short plays, which will have running times of five to 20 minutes, to the company's website, microtheatre.com.au by February 3.

A team of readers will make individual choices of the 12 best plays, with those most recommended being staged.

As well as new plays, adaptations of other works and short plays that have previously been staged at other venues and events, will be considered.

Four plays will be presented at each of the three venues: Birdy's in Tighes Hill, which was one of this year's venues, and two new places, Newcastle ArtSpace, also in Tighes Hill, and Sprout Kitchen Cafe, in Broadmeadow.

The same four plays will be performed at each of the three venues, with shows at 7pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from May 21 to 30.

The writers cannot direct their own plays, but can nominate a director on their entry forms or allow the committee to choose one. And, as the plays are being presented in intimate and stageless venues, the focus must be on the actors, rather than technical values.

There are also restrictions on the casting, given that alcohol purchases can often be made at some venues, with actors having to be 18 and over.

The 12 chosen scripts, venues and directors will be announced on March 30, with tech runs and rehearsals in the venues from May 11 to 15.