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Storm Boy

Playwright: Holloway, Tom
Year: 2013
Type: Play
Edition: Barking Gecko Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company productions

Synopsis

A boy's last childhood summer before beginning the long trek to adulthood is spent with his reclusive dad Hideaway Tom in the wild freedom of South Australia's Coorong. Storm Boy roams the savage landscape, navigating the waters and searching for debris and wildlife. Along the way he picks up some unlikely friends including the enigmatic Fingerbone Bill and a family of orphaned pelicans, including his favourite, Mr Percival.

-- synopsis by State Theatre Centre of Western Australia



Adaptation of: Storm Boy (Thiele, Colin, 1963)
Adapted for the stage by Tom Holloway, based on Colin Thiele's 1963 novel and Henri Safran's 1976 film of the same name.

Narrative Locations

Coorong, Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia  

Temporal setting: Circa 1975

Location notes:

Storm Boy lives on the Coorong. Coordinates are given for Pelican Point. The gallery and video images below show how the Coorong's sand dunes were represented as a wooden stage set resembling ridges of whalebones in the play and sophisticated mechanical puppets were created to play the pelicans. The pelican puppets are full of character and they move in very realistic ways, whereas the set is evocative of the coastal setting rather than representing the Coorong in detail.

Coorong National Park is a large lagoon where the Murray River meets the Southern Ocean. The Coorong wetlands, stretching for 110 km along the South Australian coast, is the traditional homeland of the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal people. Due to drought conditions in the mid-2000s and overuse of the Murray River water for irrigation, the Coorong region became dangerously dry, the waterways silted up, and the delicate balance of the ecosystem was threatened. By 2009 the region looked little like the wetlands Colin Thiele described in his novel, but in 2010 the drought broke and the Murray River once agian flushed fresh water into the Coorong. Since then, some birds and aquatic species have recovered, but other populations are still severely depleted. Find out more at:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3708186.htm

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Synopsis
Narrative Locations
Map

Related Texts


Storm Boy (Safran, Henri, 1976)
Storm Boy (Thiele, Colin, 1963)

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