Cirrus@Austlit

'Three Marys melds music, myth and imagination to create a moving story of exile, survival and hope. 

'An international collaboration by award-winning artists composer Andrée Greenwell and librettist Christine Evans, this fully staged chamber opera tells an intergenerational story of a family of women who must flee for their lives. 

'Inspired by the French medieval legend of the biblical Three Marys, the tale follows the perilous journey of Maria, Magdalena and Sarah-Marie as they are banished from their homeland and forced out to sea in an oarless boat. 

'On their journey they encounter the opera’s Teen Chorus, the spirits of refugee children lost at sea – their memories and their names slipping away. Only Marzoug the fisherman is anchored to the land, by his promise to honour the stories of those thrown back by the ocean. He keeps watch. 

'Stripped to the raw elements of exile, the ocean, and survival, the women’s voices echo across the ages as people from all backgrounds still undertake desperate ocean journeys in search of refuge.'

Source: Production blurb.

'It's a still, hot summer in Perth, Australia. The heat is shimmering off the city's glass buildings, with not much to do but surrender to the cool of Beatty Park's swimming pool. However, something is moving amid all the stillness - a hidden snake sliding through shadows. It's moving through lives and connecting them with its sonar trembles: Auntie, in town with Jerome to find the kid's runaway mum; Kevin, tired of his bus route, dealing with raucous kids and bottlenecks and a city that seems to be growing hostile; Karri and his other-worldly sister Bat Girl; Jackie and her sisters, sharing smokes by the pool. In this exquisite, lyrical verse novel by acclaimed playwright Christine Evans, readers will witness the strange and invisible ways people are drawn together and pulled apart - and to venture to the catastrophic release that might ultimately return them home. ' (Publication summary)

'A multimedia play that tells the charged story of an encounter between an American soldier and an Iraqi girl blogger in Fallujah, 2003, through the lens of the technologies that connect them.' (Production summary)