The Drover’s Wife

Leah Purcell

Henry Lawson’s story of the Drover’s Wife pits the stoic silhouette of a woman against the unforgiving Australian landscape, staring down a serpent—it’s our frontier myth captured in a few pages. In Purcell’s play the old story gets a very fresh rewrite. Once again the Drover’s Wife is confronted by a threat in her yard in Australia’s high country, but now it’s a man. He’s bleeding, he’s got secrets, and he’s black. She knows there’s a fugitive wanted for killing whites, and the district is thick with troopers, but something’s holding the Drover’s Wife back from turning this fella in … A taut thriller of our pioneering past, The Drover’s Wife is full of fury, power and has a black sting to the tail, reaching from Australia’s infancy into our complicated present.

Brave, ruthless and utterly compelling from the first image, this epic tragedy is a passionate howl of pain and rage ... a bold and exciting contribution to Australian playwriting – and, arguably, to Australia’s very identity

- NSW Premier's Awards judges' report

Leah Purcell’s stage adaptation of Henry Lawson’s short story, The Drover’s Wife, is a major new piece of Australian playwriting.

- Ben Neutze, Daily Review

Awards
Victorian Prize for Literature
Awards
Book of the Year, NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Release
Jun-2017
ISBN
9781760620974
RRP (AUD)
$23.99
Pages
80
Format
Paperback & ebook
Category
Playtext

Leah Purcell

LEAH PURCELL is a proud Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland. She is a multi award-winning actor, writer and director.

Currency Press

Currency Press is Australia’s leading performing arts publisher.

The Drover’s Wife
Rights
World, all languages
Contact
Claire Grady
Email
Website