Pigman's Lament

"My fascist grandfather is coming to kill me, and I only have a pen to defend myself"

Award-winning actor Raoul Craemer has his mind set on revealing his family's darkest secrets - secrets that his German grandfather has no intention of letting him give up.

Trapped in his Canberra apartment, Craemerl is blitzed by his grandfather in modern day Australia. What ensues is a white-knuckle ride through the psyche of a man tormented by a fascist past...or is it the present? Forced to re-live extreme moments from his own life, and with his family threatened, this psychological thriller spirals into a hair raising reckoning between the generations. Is he man enough to save himself?

Pigman's Lament is brought to life by acclaimed avant-garde theatre director Paulo Castro (Portuguese National Theatre, Schaubühne Berlin, Adelaide International Festival) renowned in Australia for forging unique humorous and corrosive contemporary theatre as part of company Stone/Castro).

Exploring inter-generational familial themes, notions of duty and masculinity, the choices we make in how we lead our lives and the secrets we choose to keep, Pigman's Lament asks can we reconcile today's stay-at-home dad with yesterday's soldier?

Raoul Craemer is well known to Canberra audiences and recent works include Where I End & You Begin, Scandalous Boy, Word Play, And Then There Were Three, Training Squad and Destination Home. Raoul and Paulo are joined by designer Christiane Nowak.

"Craemer inhabited the character, using both his voice and his body to bring Kabir to life in front of us...It was as if Jaireth, the writer, Raoul Craemer the performer and Kabir himself had joined together to present a race memory about a singular person who, despite being illiterate, oppressed, poor and torn between two religious groups, created beautiful, poetic songs" (TO SILENCE: KABIR)

"Craemer's delightful Vidooshaka ... the shows escalating hilarity is matched only be the actors' evident enthusiasm and panache: [he has] written and devised a show that is funny, uncomfortable and moving" (VIDOOSHAKA - THE INDIAN CLOWN)

"Here, let's put a real bullet in this gun"

Street Two - unreserved | Duration - 75 minutes, no interval.