'Citizens is set at the dividing wall of an unspecified war-torn country where a series of unconnected exchanges between ordinary people transpire as they go about their day-to-day lives. A picture of life is revealed in the fragments of the interchanges between vulnerable people where the human spirit is carefully probed and laid bare.
'Soldiers is set in an air force hangar in Sydney, where family members gather to receive the bodies of their sons, brothers, husbands and friends lost in a conflict that they may not have supported.'
Source: Production blurbs (Kings Cross Theatre production).
Epigraph: But then Minerva came, that warrior's aid;/ she glided from the sky and ordered him/ to plow the gound and then to plant within/ the earth the viper's teeth: these were to be/ the seeds of men to come. And he obeyed;/ and even as he pressed his plow - as she/ had bade him to- he scattered the snake's teeth/ within the ground: from such seed, men would spring./ At that - a thing beyond belief - the ground/ began to stir, and from the furrows sprang/ spear-tips, than casques with waving plumes, and next,/ shoulders and chests, and weapon bearing arms:/ a harvest crop of warriors with shields ...// And battle frenzy soon had seized them all;/ at each other's hand, those brothers fell:/ their wounds were mutual. Now those young men,/ destined to such brief lives, beat with their chests/ against their mother earth, warmed with their blood ...
Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book III (Cadmus) Translation by Allen Mandelbaum
First produced by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, 19 April 2008.
Both produced at Kings Cross Theatre, 9-24 November 2018.
Director: Kristine Landon-Smith.
Designer: Nick Fry.
Composer: Felix Cross.
Lighting Designer: Martin Kinnane.
Stage Manager: Hannah Crane.
Cast: Danny Ball, Bernadette Fam, Phoebe Grainer, Nicholas Hasemann, Lisa Huyhn, Badaidilaga Muftuh-Flynn, Steven Montheith, Jillian Nguyen, Angela Nica, Jens Radda, Joseph Raggatt, Saleh Saqqaf, Chloe Schwank, Louis Segeuir, and Ross Sharp.
