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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / On a dark and stormy night…

IN a textbook dramatic scenario, Hannie Rayson’s play “Extinction” begins on a dark and stormy night.

Playwright Hannie Rayson… “Everyone is flawed in this play.”
Playwright Hannie Rayson… “Everyone is flawed in this play.”

More specifically, it’s set on the road near Cape Otway on the south-west coast of Victoria where, she says: “It’s very bracing, very beautiful, it’s known as the shipwreck coast”.

Harry Jewell is driving to his parents in a “discombobulated” state of mind when things go bump in the night. He finds a rare tiger quoll, which he takes to a nearby wildlife centre. Together with environmentalist Piper Ross he attempts to save the life of the quoll, and what could be a better prelude to a night in bed?

Sexy and provocative in just the way Rayson likes, the plot thickens.

Harry puts $2 million on the table to fund a biodiversity project. He’s obviously one of the good guys, handsome too. Then Piper learns that he’s a mining executive bent on plundering the cape for coal.

Enough of the plot narration and down to the ideas behind it: should we get into bed with business – quite literally? Should we put money into saving creatures if we think they’re doomed? And what about the idealistic individuals who run the research institutions?

Rayson is one of our foremost playwrights, known for writing plays full of humour, but involving much to consider.

“Extinction” is based on ideas she got from a real-life place that becomes the conservation ecology centre in the play, though she is quick to note that there was no corruption there, where they were “all good sports”.

“Everyone is flawed in this play,” Rayson says.

“There are lots of questions to ask, but it’s not alienating.”

The coming production, a collaboration between the Geelong Performing Arts Centre and Red Stitch Actors Theatre, is a first east-coast outing for “Extinction”.

Rayson has great hopes for a stimulating response in Canberra.

“There are intelligent people coming to the theatre, I just want to take people on an emotional journey, funny, engaging, a great story, intellectually nourishing – that’s my kind of art,” she says.

“Extinction”, The Playhouse, July 20-23. Bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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