DO NOT GO GENTLE

About the show

An all-star cast – Peter Carroll, Vanessa Downing, John Gaden, Josh McConville, Philip Quast, Marilyn Richardson and Brigid Zengeni – joins forces with STC Director, New Work & Artistic Development Paige Rattray to tell this lyrical story of resilience in the face of insurmountable adversity and an unflinching exploration of ageing and dementia. This is a modern Australian classic written by a true iconoclast, Patricia Cornelius. Battered by screeching winds and blinded by snow, each member of Robert Scott’s Antarctic expedition party must face hunger, exhaustion and cold that defies imagination. But fractures appear in the tale of this epic journey, and another story emerges – of ordinary people coming to terms with human frailty, fading memories and what it means to have lived well. Are these weary travellers really trudging through uncharted territory, or are they walking a path of inevitability set out before them? Are they really at the edge of the world, or is the perilous landscape obscuring pitfalls that would test even the most seasoned explorer? Winner of both the NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Literary Awards, Patricia Cornelius’ Do not go gentle… is a delicately crafted story told in moving vignettes, that inhabits two worlds; one that illustrates the extremity of human ambition and another that dramatises the inevitable truths of our existence.