Cirrus@Austlit

'Isolated on a crumbling estate, two siblings live under the control of their authoritarian Father, where they speak a language and inhabit a surreal universe of their own imagination.

'When a cataclysmic event occurs, they are forced to encounter the outside world for the first time, causing their belief system to shatter and expose the startling history of their existence.'

Source: Production blurb.

'Gulf Country in the 1920's - there is a murder on Vanderlin Island, the witnesses are rounded up. Eight-year-old Hilda and three other girls are taken with them. They ride 500kms to Darwin where the girls are put into Kahlin Compound, the home for half-castes.

'Devon UK in the 1970's: the family manor house is locked up by bailiffs. The family sneak back in and live in secret in the servant's quarters but are discovered. They flee to Australia on the ten-pound-passage arriving in Darwin in November 1974.

'Two families from very different backgrounds come to call Darwin home. Then cyclone Tracy hits, devastating the city on Christmas eve 1974.

'"Tracy" is based on the extraordinary family stories of Yanyuwa woman Samantha Chalmers, Nicola Fearn and survivors of Cyclone Tracy.

'Through storytelling, movement, music, exquisite puppetry and mask, Tracy intertwines the lives of two very different women. '

Source: www.blackbirdproductions.com.au/ (Sighted 05/12/2008).