Our Country's Good
February 14 - 16 & 21 - 23
Based on the novel The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally. Both the play and the novel are drawn from actual letters and journals written in 1788 by the British prison ships to arrive in Australia in mass exportation of convicts.
In this new society, overseen by British officers and soldiers, many of whom had fought and lost tthe war against the American colonies, both the convicts and their keepers felt exiled in a strange new world.
In Timberlake Wertenbaker's riveting play, actors play both the convicts and their jailers, a rich device that challenges our beliefs about the nature of a "civilized" culture.