Our Country’s Good Tobacco Factory Theatres

Our Country’s Good Tobacco Factory Theatres:

Rehearsal image: Mark Dawson Photography

Fresh from the success of the Mike Tweddle’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Factory Company continues their 2019 season with Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, directed by Anna Girvan.

The play is based on the lives of real people, both convicts and soldiers, who sailed with the First Fleet to set up a new penal colony in Australia.

The play questions rule setting in a civilised society, crime and punishment and the lives people might have had in different circumstances.

It is led by Captain Phillips, who believes it is his Officers’ duty to rehabilitate rather than punish.

Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark, is charged with the task of enabling this as the convicts attempt to perform George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer.

Anna Girvan says: “Reading the text as a teenager, I don’t think I quite grasped its humour and pathos and it was only reading it again, having worked with community theatre groups, that I really sparked a passion for the text. I have seen first-hand the power that theatre can have to reform communities and create an outlet for creativity, which so many institutions think of as a luxury rather than a vital part of education. I have seen the transformative effect of giving people a voice and platform to let their story be told…Theatre is a means of escape for the trapped convicts in the play and it is going to be interesting exploring the question of ‘who or what is theatre for?’”

Our Country’s Good is at Tobacco Factory Theatres from Wednesday 17 April – Saturday 11 May 2019.

Age recommendation 14 years upwards.

BSL Interpreted Performance on Friday 26 April at 7.30pm.

For more information or to book, visit:
tobaccofactorytheatres.com