INNVER VOICES to Play Old Fitz Theatre

Don't Look Away in association with Red Line Productions at the Old Fitz is presenting Louis Nowra's Inner Voices. This marks the first time the play will be presented in Sydney since its premiere almost four decades ago at the Nimrod Theatre in a production directed by John Bell and featuring Tony Sheldon, Jane Harders, Bill Conn and Robert Alexander.

Inner Voices first brought Louis Nowra to public attention as a playwright in 1977 and vividly demonstrates his early preoccupation with isolation and the exercise of power through the imagination. Held prisoner by men whose ignorance is matched only by their ambition, Ivan is the son of Catherine the Great, locked away since childhood and set upon the throne of Russia knowing only his name.

"We want to give contemporary audiences a deeper imaginative engagement with the history of Australian playwriting, but we're not doing this purely to educate. That's a byproduct, not the point," said Don't Look Away's Artistic Director Phil Rouse. "Our company seeks to celebrate great works that have flown under the radar and fallen through the cracks of history. With Inner Voices, audiences will be experiencing a rare example of a classical tragedy written by a prolific Australian. This isn't a drama of households and families but a savage journey into a young man's mind and seems universes away from Nowra's more familiar and digestible works Cosi and Summer of the Aliens".

Rouse has enlisted a talented cast who shares his vision of reviving and reinvigorating this often forgotten play by one of Australia's finest playwrights. Damien Strouthos (Bell Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Henry V) will lead a cast that also includes Annie Byron (Head Full of Love, My Name is Asher Lev), Julian Garner (Arcadia, Storm Boy), Emily Goddard (The Lonely Wolf, Boy at the Edge of Everything), Anthony Gooley (Good Works, Of Mice and Men), Nicholas Papademetriou (The House of Ramon Iglesia, Thomas Murray and the Upside Down River) and Francesca Savige (Shellshock, A Doll's House).