Cirrus@Austlit

'A contemporary neo-noir thriller spanning seven decades and set in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, this August [2021] Theatre Works proudly present The Darkening Sky – the latest premiere work from renowned playwright Richard Murphet.

'Bringing together some of our finest local artists and arts makers, The Darkening Sky interweaves lives from the past and present in a desperate bid to solve the unexplained disappearance of two women.

'In the warm and familiar surrounds of his local café Jamie has managed to build a life of peace and solitude for decades. Now thrust unwillingly into reconstructing troubled memories, his belief in the calm surface his childhood crumbles – surrounded by elements from a past he didn’t even know existed. At the same time a detective is handed a Cold Case involving the disappearance of a young woman in the 1980s. Chasing answers to this mystery unearths a web of political intrigue, violence, and sacrifice.

'Examining a hidden history of Melbourne and featuring well known locations around St. Kilda and other inner suburbs, The Darkening Sky is an electrifying and all engrossing new Australian work. 90 minutes of non-stop action, not to be missed.'

Source: Theatre Works.

'In Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre, Richard Murphet presents a close analysis of the theatre practice of two ground-breaking artists – Richard Foreman and Jenny Kemp – active over the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. In addition, he tracks the development of a form of ‘epileptic’ writing over the course of his own career as writer/director. 

'Murphet argues that these three auteurs have developed subversive alternatives to the previously dominant forms of dramatic realism in order to re-think the relationship between theatre and reality. They write and direct their own work, and their artistic experimentation is manifest in the tension created between their content and their form. Murphet investigates how the works are made, rather than focusing upon an interpretation of their meaning. Through an examination of these artists, we gain a deeper understanding of a late modernist paradigm shift in theatre practice.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Leo's a security guard, Springs Motel; a Vietnam vet, haunted by his past. He's a timebomb ticking to midnight. The new couple in Cabin 7 are acting strange ... security risks. But the more he investigates, the more his ghosts rise up to engulf him. Tonight Leo's ready to explode ... and he could take us all with him.'

Source: The Arts Centre website, http://www.theartscentre.com.au/
Sighted: 23/07/2008