What's On

“LET US SIT UPON THE GROUND”

When a famous leader of nations is forced to recognise he is no more than a frail human being like everyone else, he implores the people around him to help him understand what the story of living is worth, and what it means to die - “let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings…”, Richard II asks his friends. We ask you to do the same this summer. To sit upon the ground in one of Sydney’s most beautiful outdoor theatres, to tell stories, to revel in poetry, to think as a community about what nationhood and leadership mean, and to bear witness to how Richard II’s deposition, the first formal party room meeting to spill an English king, sets in motion an extraordinary ricochet of political fractures that William Shakespeare turned into the greatest study of leadership, human competition and ambition ever penned.

This summer Sport for Jove celebrates ten incredible years of theatre-making, ten summers of thrilling and surprising outdoor theatre, with our most immersive and ambitious season yet: Shakespeare’s Rose Riot.

Rose Riot is Artistic Director Damien Ryan’s furious new adaptation of Shakespeare’s extraordinary history cycle, covering a hundred years of riotous humanity and a pantheon of the earth’s most remarkable political thinkers and drinkers, warriors and clowns, villains, heroines and despots. A thrilling, hilarious, frightening and humane journey from Richard II to Henry IV, Harry and Kate Percy, Falstaff and Henry V, Joan of Arc, Henry VI, the Queens Margaret and Elizabeth, Richard Plantagenet, the Lady Anne and her lover ‘misshapen Dick’. And of course, Jack Cade, history’s most unlikely politician whose major policy platform still resonates today…”LET’S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!”

The Hollow Crown (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V) and The Wars of the Roses (Henry VI, Richard III) will be presented as two distinct but linked productions. Audiences can enjoy either show as a stand-alone production or experience full the cycle by seeing both in one day.

SUMMER IS COMING!