Steamworks Arts / Savage Grace 2021
21 years on, with the original cast we revisit this powerful classic Australian play by Alana Valentine, one of Australia's most esteemed playwrights.
Savage Grace is the story of Dr Tex Cladakis, an American HIV specialist, who meets bioethics professor Robert Bavaro. They clash over ethical issues, but despite or perhaps because of this, a passionate sexual affair develops between them. As Cladakis considers assisting the suicide of one of his terminally ill patients, the moral ground shifts and stakes escalate, threatening their personal beliefs and the trust and love that is growing between them.
This play is a ground-breaking work and a timely provocation given our current climate. Alana has written a contemporary update to the original work, with both characters now experiencing the 'new' pandemic of COVID-19, as they look back twenty+ years reflecting on love, loss, and their experience of the HIV-Aids pandemic that changed their lives forever.
"It’s rare for a play to have two productions 20 years apart and performed by the same cast, butSavageGrace has been twice blessed. There was a celebratory atmosphere inside the theatre before a word was spoken by Humphrey Bower and Gibson Nolte, the duo who breathed meaning and conviction into AlanaValentine’s diamond-sharp prose, then and now."
Image by Dan Grant, 2021
Image by Dan Grant, 2021
Image by Dan Grant, 2021
Image by Dan Grant, 2021
"Impressively directed by Richardson, both Nolte and Bower can make theirbodies respond to thedialogue’s demands, and were funny and winsome in this powerful play about emotional conflict."
"This show is a gift to audiences from all walks of life. In a society where some ideas cannot be publicly explored but through the patient permission of the stage, Savage Grace reminds us why we all need theatre."
Creative Team
Writer
Alana Valentine
Performers
Humphrey Bower
Gibson Nolte
Director
Sally Richardson
Co-director & Lighting Designer
Joe Lui
Assistant Director &
Stage Manager
Timothy Green
Sound Designer
Professor Cat Hope
Set Designer
Matthew McVeigh
Costume Designer
Nicole Marrington
Creative Producer
Libby Klysz
Variegated Productions
Publicity
Tracy Routledge
Social Media
Sian Murphy
