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FCA performance presents

The Country

Writer: Martin Crimp
Director: Sanja Simic (BCA Hons)

“You want to be honest? Because the more you talk, the less you say. The less you really say."

Martin Crimp, The Country 2000

Who is the strange woman Richard has found by the side of the road? Why has he brought her back to the house where his wife and children are sleeping? What will happen when she wakes up?

Martin Crimp’s play The Country is no light-hearted pastoral romp but a compelling, tightly written chamber piece unraveling the intricacies of sexual politics, power and class. Crimp uses language like a scalpel, effortlessly dissecting and exposing the febrile intensity of a relationship in crisis.

Crimp, one of Britain’s most prolific and best known playwrights, has written a gripping and microscopically nuanced text, which gains particular relevance this year with its upcoming companion play The City premiering at Sydney Theatre Company in July.

Crimp's sheer craftsmanship, his originality in language, his innovative attitude to theatrical form, the emotional intensity of his vision, his unblinking accounts of the dark void beneath the veneer of the humdrum, and his refusal to compromise his standards or his individuality, are reasons enough for his greatness.

Alex Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, 2007

BCA Honours student, Sanja Simic, enlists the talents of recent BCA graduates Theresa Mullan, Natalie Randall and Murray Clapham to bring this riveting drama to life.

Director, Sanja Simic was most recently Assistant Director on Pre]Paradise Sorry Now, directed by Version 1.0’s Christopher Ryan, which premiered at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre (IPAC) in May. Previous directing credits include Michael Gow’s Europe (2008), Gary Owen’s The Drowned World (2008), under the mentorship of Tim Maddock, and The House that Jack Built by Miriam Wells (2008).

The Country is a collaboration between current FCA students, graduates and postgraduate, undertaking a text which Michael Billington has described as "[a] pinterish phillipic about corrosive deceit and delusion... a fascinatingly cryptic piece."

Seating is limited so Bookings are essential!

Season: Thursday 11 – Saturday 13 June 2009 @ 8PM
Venue: Black Box space, Building 25.G18, University of Wollongong
Booking number: 02 4221 4889
Tickets: $20 full/ $12 Conc/ $8 FCA Student

Media Inquiries: for interviews and photographs, please contact Tanya Barton-Saad on 02 4221 5853