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"CONSTANCE DRINKWATER AND THE FINAL DAYS OF SOMERSET" HOMECOMING FESTIVAL SEASON FOR AWARD WINNING PLAYWRIGHT Former Darwin actor and playwright Stephen Carleton will bring his award winning melodrama “Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset” home for an NT premier season at the Darwin Festival in August. The play, described as “unashamedly gothic with the plot of a thriller,” won the 2005 Patrick White Award for Carleton as well as the New York Dramatists Award and was a finalist in the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award. It has played to sold-out houses in Brisbane for the Queensland Theatre Company and in Sydney for Griffin Theatre Company. Carleton was born in North Queensland but raised in Darwin and developed his craft with Darwin Theatre Company and Knock Em Down Theatre, a group he co-founded in the late 1990’s. He says the fact that Cyclone Tracy flattened his family home when he was just six years old left him with an indelible sense of fragility about existence in northern Australia. It was his fascination with doomed attempts at settlement in the north that led him to write the play which certainly promises a dark and stormy night at the theatre. In the play, Constance Drinkwater, two of her daughters and a demented priest are the last survivors of an attempt to settle an isolated outpost on the Cape York Peninsula at the end of the 19th Century. With her husband, her servants and five of her daughters dead, Lady Constance battles to hold on to the trappings of decency and the illusion of safety. This tragic yet hilarious melodrama, set on the eve of federation, paints a picture of northern Australia with the peculiar social values and racial mix that have set us apart from our fellow Australians down south. Carleton has created a play of national significance that speaks to the world about life in the north Australian tropics. Although set in the past, it pokes metaphorical fun at the nuances of contemporary society in the north. The fact that it is set in the lead-up to federation conspires to instruct us on the way in which our forebears constructed our national identity. Some of the characters and parts of the story are based on figures from colonial fiction as well as real events in the settlement of the far north. Stephen Carleton has delivered a sophisticated rendering of the history and heritage of north Australians and the premier season of his play at the Darwin Festival should be treated as a homecoming gift from a local playwright who has taken his northern heritage to the south and triumphed in the big pond of Australian literature. This production for the Darwin Festival represents a strengthening of the relationship between Darwin Theatre Company and two north Queensland companies, JUTE Theatre in Cairns and Tropic Sun Theatre in Townsville. The three companies have formed an alliance to coproduce plays for a northern Australian audience. The artistic directors of DTC and JUTE Theatre are cast in the lead roles of this production and other roles are shared between actors from Darwin, Cairns, Townsville and Sydney. The collaboration between these key regional theatre companies in Darwin, Cairns and Townsville is designed to cross fertilize the performing arts in the north as well as to support the development of a stronger identity for north Australian theatre. Contance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset plays at the Studio Theatre at the Darwin Entertainment Centre from August 15 to 19. It will tour to Cairns and Townsville during September. Stephen Carleton is currently lecturing in theatre at the University of Queensland where he is also completing a PhD exploring constructions of the North in Australian Theatre history. He is available for interview by appointment. For more information please contact Tony Collins on 0407 729 681.
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