A unique opportunity to experience this extraordinary book, Stork Theatre presents performance readings of extracts from Patrick White’s The Tree of Man by stars of the Australian stage and screen at Melbourne’s Old Treasury Building each Tuesday in August.
Stan and Amy Parker carve out a life in the bush 20km from Sydney in the 1920s. Their simple lives are made epic, intense and profound when seen through the elemental landscape which seeps into their psyches. They are Adam and Eve before the Fall.
By the end of the novel the City of Sydney has reached their farm, buying up their ‘Garden of Eden’. Throughout their lives, searing moments of illumination offer them insights into the meaning of life and the possibility of beauty.
Considered controversial, acerbic and unpredictable, Patrick White was the great poet of Australian literature and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. His work explores some of humankind’s great existential questions in a distinctly Australian environment.
One of White’s best works, The Tree of Man is a radical revision of one of the classic Australian stories, the pioneering saga where White reveals art as the source of transcendence. The performance readings will feature Caroline Lee, Denis Moore, Neil Pigot and Naomi Rukavina.
Stork Theatre is the creation of Helen Madden, beginning in 1983 with an idea for the Fairfield Amphitheatre on the banks of the Yarra. Since then it has staged annual productions of Virgil, Homer and the greatest literary works works of the West for Melbourne audiences.
“There is something of the miraculous in The Tree of Man” – Christos Tsiolkas
The Tree of Man by Patrick White
Margaret Craig Room – Old Treasury Building, 20 Spring Street, Melbourne
Performance dates: 6 – 27 August 2019
Information and Bookings: www.storktheatre.com.au
Image: Caroline Lee to feature in The Tree of Man (supplied)