The Captive
by Ben Ellis
by Ben Ellis
The Captive is a poignant exploration of an immigrant's search for belonging and redemption amid the clash of civilizations and the impact of colonization on indigenous peoples.
About The Play
About The Play
THIS PRODUCTION SOLD OUT FOR THE ENTIRE RUN
How far will a man go to call a place ‘home’? In a land of immigrants, who are the dispossessed?
1840. A ship is wrecked on the uncharted coast of colonial Australia. On evidence of a female survivor, Angus Mitchell, an enterprising Scottish immigrant, is employed to search for her amongst the Aboriginal tribes of a wild and foreign land, beyond the new boundaries of his own civilisation. But does a savage land turn a man savage? And what exactly is Mitchell hunting for? A real woman, a myth or some kind of redemption? As the search becomes ever more desperate, Mitchell must choose between his humanity and the land he desperately seeks to make his home.
The Captive is a stark and poetic tale of the dispossessed struggling to find a homeland, and the savagery with which they impose their ideas of civilisation on an ancient land and its people.