I Am a Miracle

MT_I Am a MiracleA timely and hard-hitting look at social oppression and the miscarriage of justice throughout the ages, Malthouse Theatre presents Declan Greene’s I Am a Miracle for a limited season from 21 July 2015.

After 18 years on death row, Marvin Lee Wilson was executed by lethal injection. But after a 2002 Supreme Court ruling, his sub-normal IQ should have disqualified him from the death sentence. Strapped to a gurney, his final statement was a plea for recognition: I ain’t left yet, must be a miracle. I am a miracle.

“The more I read about Wilson’s life, the more I realised his story was predetermined by factors and forces outside his control; his class, his race, his low IQ, and three centuries of slave trading,’ says playwright Declan Greene. “So I stopped writing about him, and started writing for him.”

Taking these words as a point of departure, Greene (8GB of Hardcore Pornography) meets Wilson’s story with a work of monumental scope, spanning three continents and two hundred and forty years, exploring the cyclical nature of human history, presenting three figures crying out for a miracle; a Dutch soldier in an 18th Century slave colony, a man in modern day Melbourne trapped by his carer and Wilson in his Texan State Penitentiary.

Revered film and stage actress Melita Jurisic (Mad Max: Fury Road) is joined by one of Australia’s most versatile performers Bert LaBonté (The Mountaintop), together with award-winning operatic soprano Hana Lee Crisp in bringing to life Greene’s foreboding script.

Set to a haunting transcendent choral score by David Chisholm (Kursk), I Am a Miracle depicts a world bound to the injustices of the past – crying out for intervention. Wildly careening between the epic and the intimate, this is a mind-expanding theatrical experience.

Ranging from the epic to the intimate, I Am a Miracle is a mind expanding theatrical experience – determined to change the course of history.

Direction: Matthew Lutton  Cast: Melita Jurisic, Hana Lee Crisp, Bert LaBonté  Composition: David Chisholm  Set & Costume Design: Marg Horwell  Set & Lighting Design: Paul Jackson  Sound Design & Engineer: Marco Cher-Gibard

I Am a Miracle
Merlyn Theatre
Season: 21 July – 9 August 2015
Bookings: (03) 9685 5111 or online at: www.malthousetheatre.com.au

For more information, visit: www.malthousetheatre.com.au for details.

Image: Key Image Photography – Andrew Gough / Image Treatment – The Sisters Hayes