CASTRO'S CHILDREN Comes to Melbourne in July

‘Castro's Children' is set in Cuba and America in the early 1960s and 1980s – but its story could be set anywhere, at any time, where children's lives are displaced by adult wars and ideologies. Its reach is universal, and Music Theatre Melbourne is staging its world premiere from July 5 to 13 at Gasworks, Albert Park, Melbourne.

Six children – three boys, three girls. Sent away from Havana by their parents in the first year of Castro's regime, to live among strangers in the USA. Would they ever see their parents or their homeland again? Who would take that gamble with innocent young lives? And why?

The six in ‘Castro's Children' are fictional, but they represent the 14,048 real children who were sent out of Cuba under ‘Operation Pedro Pan', a scheme devised in collaboration with the CIA and the Catholic Church to take children aged between 10 and 14 out of Cuba and ‘park' them in the US until  Castro's impending and inevitable fall (!). It changed the lives of those children and  their parents forever: some for good; some not …

The outstanding adult cast consists of FEM BELLING, ZAK BROWN, MADELEINE FEATHERBY, BRYCE GIBSON, TOM GREEN, DREW LANE, TOD STRIKE, NOAH SZTO, DAISY VALERIO, GABRIELLE WARD, PAUL WATSON and LAURA WONG. Supporting them is a startlingly talented group of young performers: STEPHANIE ADAMSON, ARIA ANINIPOC, SASHA BABUSHKIN, KAILEE BAULK, BESSIE BLAZE, ELLIOT FRANKENI, CHASE KENDALL, SCARLETT MAY, ARCHIE MENDELSSOHN, LIRA MOLLISON, JAYLEN NAGLOO,  DANIEL NUNAN, LIA SCANTLEBURY, COCO SHELMERDINE and CAMPBELL VAN ELST.

The only ‘real' characters in the show are the two men – one an idealistic school principal, one an enthusiastic parish priest – who directed the scheme. What did they, and the parents they advised, make of what they had done?

For writer Peter Fitzpatrick, “Castro's Children has been an extraordinary labour of love for my musical collaborator, Simon Stone, and for me. The story of  Operation Pedro Pan is a compelling one that really needs to be told.  It may be set nominally in a country a long way away and quite a long time ago, but its complex moral questions are urgent and immediate ones – here, now, and always.”

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