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
Leah Purcell’s stage adaptation of Henry Lawson’s short story, The Drover’s Wife, is a major new piece of Australian playwriting.
- 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.
- Rights
-
World, all languages
- Contact
-
Claire Grady
- Website