In Timberlake Wertenbaker's dramatization of a real-life incident and Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, it is 1788, and a Royal Marine lieutenant directs several of the criminals and misfits banished to the new British colony of Australia in the first play the country has produced, gradually winning the skeptical fledgling actors over to the magic of the theatre.

This is a part of our TSP Unplugged Reading Series, where audiences go behind the scenes with The Seeing Place to experience our work "unplugged." We'll start at 7pm with the audience observing our artists discussing the play in their final rehearsal, laying the ground-work for how the actors will approach the piece during the reading. At 7:45pm we'll begin the reading. Immediately following the reading we'll discuss what was seen - what is the modern relevance of the play? What would a theater company want to consider if producing the play as a ful production? These and other questions will be explored during this lively talkback.

This play is being presented during the mainstage run of Caryl Churchill's CLOUD 9. Here's is an excerpt from Frank Rich's 1991 review of the Broadway production of OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD, discussing Churchill's influence on Wertenbaker's work:

"By far the most positive Royal Court influence on Ms. Wertenbaker is that of Caryl Churchill, whose imprint can be seen when the actresses playing convicts in "Our Country's Good" double in the roles of English officers. The cross-sexual casting not only echoes a Churchill comedy about colonialism ("Cloud 9") and, for added dividends, the farcical plot of "The Recruiting Officer" itself, but it also honors Ms. Wertenbaker's point about the subversive power of theater to liberate an audience from all shackles of reality, including divisions of sex and class."

To buy tickets to CLOUD 9, click on the TICKETS link above.