DIRECTOR
Presented by QUT Acting
The Loft, Queensland University of Technology, May 2025
Alice Springs in the year 2039. A fish falls from the sky and lands at the feet of Gabriel York. And it still smells of the sea. It's been raining for days and Gabriel knows something is wrong.
Fifty years earlier his grandfather, Henry Law predicts that fish will fall from the sky heralding a great flood which will end life on earth as we know it.
In an intricate, multi-layered story that spans four generations and two continents, When the Rain Stops Falling explores patterns of betrayal, abandonment, destruction, forgiveness and love. This powerful drama unfolds with humanity, surprising humour and hope, as the past plays out into the future.
Fifty years earlier his grandfather, Henry Law predicts that fish will fall from the sky heralding a great flood which will end life on earth as we know it.
In an intricate, multi-layered story that spans four generations and two continents, When the Rain Stops Falling explores patterns of betrayal, abandonment, destruction, forgiveness and love. This powerful drama unfolds with humanity, surprising humour and hope, as the past plays out into the future.
Henry Law: Jamie Delmonte
Elizabeth Law (1960's): Jazelle White
Elizabeth Law (1988): Olivia Chapman
Gabrielle York (1988): Ella Humphries
Gabrielle York (2013): Ally Wilson
Gabriel Law/Andrew Price: Ben Thomas Grant
Joe Ryan: Alistair Nicol
Gabriel York: Daniel Johnson
Producer: Andrea Moor
Production Managers: Aaron Jeffery and Freddy Komp
Lighting Designer: Teegan Kranenburg
Costume Designer: Lottie Bamford
Props Designers: Lottie Bamford and Jaymyn Molony-Kelly
Set Supervisor: Libby Kirby
Stage Manager and Choral Director: Jo Craddy
Assistant Stage Managers: Britney Cawkwell and Jaymyn Molony-Kelly
Assistant Director: Jack Winrow
Vocal Coach: Dom Mitchell
Marketing: Britney Cawkwell and Olivia Chapman
Sound System Designer: Fel Kong
Vocal Arrangements: Eloise Collins
Photography: Jade Ellis
Directors Notes
When I was a young man, my mother said something to me that has stuck with me to this day - that being a parent is a privilege, not a right. Just because someone gave birth to you doesn’t mean they automatically deserve the title. They must work at it, earn it, never take it for granted. If a parent were to take that role for granted, the risk of damage is immense. I have viewed my parents and stepparents through this lens ever since, and if one day I have the opportunity to be a parent myself, those words of my mother will still be ringing in my ears.
They certainly have been while working on our production of Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling. That isn’t to say that the play can be boiled down to this one idea. Like all the great plays (and I consider When The Rain Stops Falling one of our country’s greatest), the scope of it is too vast to contain or summarise easily. In a way though, what my mum said to me feels like it hews close to the heart of the play. On a microcosmic level, it’s a story of parents struggling in their role as caregiver and guardian, and their children struggling to carve their own path in the aftermath of their attempt. On a macrocosmic scale, it’s a statement on the failure of the older generations to protect and preserve our planet for the generations to come, and the anger and frustration as those younger generations try to make sense of the chaos and reshape it into a world they can survive in. It is a giant of a play— monolithic, impossible, tectonic, cataclysmic.
This might make it seem an odd choice for a university production. The original production saw some of the best minds in Australian theatre come together to construct a great Australian theatrical epic for the twenty-first century. Even for an experienced artist, staging this play is an intimidating prospect. And yet, as far as I’m concerned, it does make sense to place it in the hands of young theatre makers. This play is about them. It’s about the history placed on their shoulders and the future they will inherit. This team of students - performers, designers, stage managers, production crew, all artist - have taken the challenge of Bovell’s masterpiece and embraced it with everything they have. It belongs to them, and like a good parent, they see this opportunity as a privilege, one they have worked at and earned and never taken for granted. It’s been a great privilege working with them. As all good emerging theatre makers should, they have taught me so much about our craft and why we do it. I’m immensely proud of them.
When The Rain Stops Falling is about the end of the world. It is a play that aches with sorrow and longing and fear and loss. And like all great works of art about the end of the world, it aches with hope, that we can be better than what came before us, that we never take for granted what we have lost and, most of all, that we believe in what we still have.
