Cirrus@Austlit

'A high-school history class sets out on a three-day trek across the Great Dividing Range, learning about the expedition by Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson. As details emerge about some of the earliest interactions between Indigenous people and colonial explorers, Liam, a scholarship student from the Torres Strait, starts to feel deeply uncomfortable. Tensions mount when Liam’s friend Max refuses to see how European settlement created anything but a ‘positive pathway to progress’. Tempers flare around the campfire and Liam becomes lost – in time and place – as he’s suddenly staring down the barrel of a shot-gun held by an equally startled and confused Gregory Blaxland'  (Production summary)

'Seb and Ivy are in a new relationship and are crazy about each other. They’re always together. What begins as bright young love deteriorates into obsession, control, need and destruction.

'Exploring the ideas of toxic young relationships, coercive control and patriarchal systems, this hard-hitting show weaves together political satire and psychological drama.'  (Publication/production summary)

'Shock Therapy’s Undertow is an honest and powerful look at the hidden forces, beneath the surface that move us and determine the choices we make and the actions we take.

'Centering around a high school community, the show follows a group of individuals, from a range of backgrounds, all dealing with their own unique challenge.

'Shock Therapy draw on a range of film conventions and physical theatre techniques to push their signature style in a new direction, blurring the line between different realities. The result is storytelling that is fluid and inventive, sweeping you up in its current as the story pulls you deeper.' (Production summary)

'You are sitting on the bus on the way home from a hard days work, quietly minding your own business when an argument breaks out. You overhear that the disagreement is racially motivated. The argument heats up and the threat of violence increases. A young girl takes out a mobile phone and starts to film the event. What do you do? Do you continue to sit quietly? Do you speak up and risk becoming the victim of a violent attack? When you get home that evening you get online to realise the footage from the event has gone Viral.'

Source: Shock Therapy Productions (http://www.shocktherapyproductions.com.au/productions/). (Sighted: 18/01/2017)