Our Country’s Good

Based upon true events in the first penal colony that was later to become the city of Sydney, Our Country’s Good chronicles the governor’s decision to put on a play to celebrate the king’s birthday. The play is to be cast with newly-arrived English convicts. These unwitting and unwilling pioneers face starvation, the brutality of guards, and unknown terrors of a strange and wild land. Few can read, few can act, and yet what emerges on stage is as true today as in 1789 – the restorative power of theatre to enlighten the best in us and transcend the worst.