Elephant People

ELEPHANT PEOPLE directed by John Saunders was created with the third year acting and design performing arts students for the Charles Sturt University Theatre Ensemble in the Drama Studio Theatre from the 14th through to the 18th August 2012. ELEPHANT PEOPLE is set in a circus, a sideshow of freaks, where perception, anarchy and fantasy combine. The phenomenon of The Elephant Man, The Dog Boy, Josephine Joseph the Hermaphrodite and The Bearded Lady is explored, all the while the freaks meet each other head-on, as the audience questions their existence, political correctness and the cruelty of the world. What makes a freak? Who are the real freaks? Do we just perceive these 'oddities' as freaks? Do we turn them into freaks? As the playwright says, 'To perceive is to bring in to being.' Daniel Keene is a renowned playwright both nationally and internationally who writes about the marginalized in a bold, intense and confronting manner. His writing is poetic and inspired, and he has an uncanny ability to cut straight to the often forgotten ethical issues, by exposing the depravity of his subject's lives.