Award-winning playwright and actor Kate Mulvany (
Mr Bailey’s Minder, A Man With Five Children, Ruby’s Last Dollar, Buried Child) took the independent theatre world by storm in the 2007 B Sharp Season with her Philip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award commission,
The Seed. Her acclaimed play, which subsequently took out the 2007 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Independent Production, was inspired by the impact of war on her not-so-typical Irish family.
The story involves three generations of the Maloney family reuniting after thirty years. Brian; a stoic and devout IRA soldier; Danny, his ten-pound pom and Vietnam Veteran son; and Rose his granddaughter & a 30-year-old Australian writer desperately trying to report the repercussions of the war in order to escape her own scars. The three come together for what is supposed to be a long-awaited celebration, yet as stories are told and histories revealed, the lines between truth and lies, war and peace, and family and foe become increasingly blurred, and the Maloney family home becomes an explosive battle ground.
“The play was written as an exploration of my own family's spectres of war, and as a response to military commitments being made by my country. The Seed is not so much a political piece however, as it is a deep exploration of family, loyalty and betrayal. It is a play for anyone who lives in a country currently at war, recovering from war, anyone who is part of a family. And in Australia, that's pretty much all of us right now.” - Kate Mulvany
