About the Play:
When the Rain Stops Falling has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.
When the Rain Stops Falling is a full-length drama by
Andrew Bovell. A fish drops from the sky and a lonely
middle-aged man is launched on a magical and emotional journey across
four generations of family wrestling with the awful legacy of a
secret buried deep in the past. When the Rain Stops Falling is a powerful drama that unfolds with
humanity, surprising humour and hope, as the past plays out into the
future.
When The Rain Stops Falling is a heartrending drama about
family, abandonment, betrayal and forgiveness, spanning four
generations and two hemispheres. Alice Springs, Australia in the year
2039. An extinct fish falls from the sky and lands at the feet of
Gabriel York, who is about to be reunited with a son he abandoned
decades before. It's been raining for days and Gabriel knows
something is wrong. He wonders why his son is coming and what he
wants: to know who he is? Where he comes from? Where he belongs?
Gabriel knows nothing; his own past escapes him. As the story of
Gabriel's family unfolds onstage, his ancestors come alive around him
to fill in the gaps. Fifty years earlier his grandfather, Henry Law
predicts that fish will fall from the sky heralding a great flood
which will end life on earth as we know it. With its web of
intricately overlapping connections, When the Rain Stops Falling
follows four generations of a family from the claustrophobia of a
London flat in 1959 to the windswept coast of southern Australia, and
into the heart of the Australian desert in 2039. As this family and
their world evolve over time, one question remains: in the face of
climate change, can we break our habits and change the way we live?
With four generations of fathers and sons, their mothers, lovers and
wives, the play is epic in its scope, yet at the same time
extraordinarily intimate.
When the Rain Stops Falling premiered in 2008 at the Scott
Theatre during Adelaide Festival of the Arts and subsequently toured
throughout Australia. Since
then the play has enjoyed many successful productions worldwide,
including
The Lincoln Center in New York in 2009 where it received 5 Lucille
Lortel Awards and was named best new play of the year by Time
Magazine. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and
has been
mounted by high schools, colleges, and community theatres.
Cast: 4 female, 5 male
What people say:
"When the Rain Stops
Falling will become an Australian classic." —
West Australian
"…a spellbinding saga…."
— The Australian
"superb... fiendishly
ingenious... utterly compelling." — The Guardian
"a work of gripping mystery
and emotional depth... something very special." — Daily
Telegraph
"extraordinary... grabs you
by its imagination, its heartrending originality, its tragic vision."
— Sunday Telegraph
"Bovell… has created a
quietly spellbinding puzzle of a universe that is as stealthily
thrilling and defiantly mystical as it is catastrophically
melancholy." — New York Newsday
"Bovell's time-hopping
structure is intricate but surprisingly natural — never strained or
purposely obfuscating. Rather, as in the works of Faulkner, it is a
powerful metaphor for the impossibility of escaping the past, for the
way we are all shaped by what came before — and are living in the
shadow of what comes next." — Time Magizine
"Bovell's play is weighty
stuff, a work of great sorrow and beauty." — Variety
"Bovell weaves in symbolic
imagery and the repetition of key phrases. This gives a surreal feel
to the enterprise, without lessening its emotional impact."
— TheaterMania.com
About the Playwright:
Andrew Bovell is one of Australia's most celebrated writers
for both stage and screen. His theatre credits include Speaking in
Tongues and When the Rain Stops Falling, both of which have been seen
throughout Australia as well as in Europe and the US. His plays have
won numerous awards in Australia, including the Victorian Green Room,
State Premier's Awards, and the peer-judged AWGIE awards. Equally
successful are his films, which include Strictly Ballroom and Lantana
(based on his stage play
Speaking in Tongues), which
won over ten major awards in Australia and was critically acclaimed
internationally.