'Our Country's Good' (School Play Dec 2008)
Following the success of 'Sarafina' in 2007 and 'Flesh' in 2006, Caroline Duck returns to direct another stunning production at GCH: 'Our Country’s Good', by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
Performances by A Level Drama students take place on 3rd, 4th and 5th of December 2008.
Challenging the audience’s perception of the power of theatre, this tense play tells the story of a group of convicts in the first penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia, in 1789. Young Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark has brought the prisoners together to stage a production of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in the hope that the humanity of drama might effect some transformation in the “filthy, thieving, lying” convicts. Accustomed to being treated like animals and flogged brutally for an offence as trivial as stealing a biscuit, the convicts must now learn to work with one another and with officers to ensure the play’s success. To establish the distinction between convict and officer, Wertenbaker employs a mixture of the course and the eloquent to illustrate the poignancy of language. Check out some of the images from the play:
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