Appleton Ladies Potato Race by Melanie Tait-Queensland Theatre

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Director: Priscilla Jackman
Cast list: Barb Lowing, Rachel Gordon, Libby Munroe, Natassia Halabi, Valerie Bader, and Francesca Waters (rehearsal)
Creative team: Michael Scott Mitchell (Set Designer), Leigh Buchanan (Costume Designer) John Rayment (Lighting Designer), Brady Watkins (Composer & Sound Designer)
Production & Workshop Photography: Brett Boardman

Season Dates: 7 th – 28 th October 2023

About the project

Following the success of its world premiere at Ensemble Theatre in 2019, Queensland Theatre audiences were in raptures for this new production of The Appleton Ladies Potato Race in 2023.

The Appleton Ladies Potato Race is about the ‘sink or swim’ challenges of change; about connection, disconnection and reconnecting. It is about the quest to find our people and carve out of a place in a world in which we participate as equals. It’s about our relationship with history and change; seeing the world as it really is and daring to ask if it can be something more.

Enveloped in Melanie’s characteristic, infectious charm and quintessential Australian humour, Appleton is a beautifully crafted a story about five women, from a small country town. But its huge heart doesn’t shy away from packing a political punch. How do we honour the traditions of our past, and still move forward as a society into the future? How do we celebrate with pride and acceptance who we have been, while also collectively deciding the values of who we are becoming? It is about small lives that are momentarily disrupted by something bigger. Yet in the midst of inevitable change, it also asks how we find home and celebrates our eternal drive as humans to belong.