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Una lost her innocence. Ray changed his name. Fifteen years later, she found him. A relationship that transformed two people forever is unexpectedly revisited in a powerful confrontation that questions everything you believe about love, guilt, and morality.
Canberra-based award winning NIDA graduate David Atfield returns to The Street after a long absence to direct Noel Hodda and Nell Shipley in The Street Theatre’s Blackbird, Scottish playwright David Harrower’s electrifying and explosive Olivier Award-winning play opening at The Street Theatre on Friday June 19.
Inspired by the case of Toby Studebaker, an American ex-marine who, in 2003, ran off with a 12-year-old British schoolgirl whom he met in an internet chat room, Blackbird is a play that breaks rules. This brilliant, unnerving and controversial modern tragedy that has riveted audiences worldwide, deals unflinchingly with pedophilia, child abuse, and sexual power. Told in real time in spare poetic language, it has left audiences in stunned silence, unable to escape the moral transgressions as the perspectives of victim and abuser are dissected.
Commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival and a smash hit on London’s West End Blackbird was hailed by reviewers in the UK as the most powerful drama in a decade:
“With consummate skill and brooding ambiguity Harrower suggests that adult guilt and childhood innocence should never be automatically assumed”- THE GUARDIAN
“David Harrower’s intense and emotional play is a miracle“ NEW YORK TIMES
“Harrower has a sharp knife and he wields it without blinking. Blackbird will be recognised as one of the greatest of modern dramas. Unlike most contemporary plays, it goes to places most theatre only dreams of going: taboo and the holy grail of catharsis” REAL TIME
Blackbird stars renowned theatre/television actor Noel Hodda familiar to audiences through regular roles in E Street, Sons and Daughters, Out of the Blue, and Neighbours. Noel was a founding member of the Riverina Theatre Company and a long-serving board member of the Griffin Theatre Company. In her Street Theatre professional debut is Canberra WAAPA graduate Nell Shipley. Set and costume designer Imogen Keen, whose clever design for Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris wowed audiences earlier this year, has teamed up with sound designer Liberty Kerr to create the garbage-strewn staff room where the meeting takes place . Choosing to present the work in the round with the close proximity of stage to the audience means views are brought right in close, which adds heightens the viewing experience.
VENUE The Street Theatre, Childers St Canberra City West
DATES Friday 19 June - Saturday 4 July AT 8pm
TICKETS Fri/Sat $29 Concession $25 Student $21
Tues $25 Concession $21 Student $15
Wed/Thurs nights $25 Concession $29 Student $23
BOOKINGS 02 6247 1223 OR WWW.THESTREET.ORG.AU
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