IN CONVERSATION AND PERFORMANCE
Twenty Minutes With The Devil
by Luis Gómez Romero & Desmond Manderson
3pm Sunday 19 June
The Street Theatre, Canberra
Pre-show Conversation 3pm Sunday 19 June
Performance 4pm Sunday 19 June
Join Director Caroline Stacey and playwrights Luis Gómez Romero and Desmond Manderson in a pre-show conversation and delve into the tale, its characters and the development and production of a new Australian play creating connections between law and justice and the arts.
“You see, my friend, I am just a humble businessman with a knack for success and no tolerance for failure.”
Half an hour alone with your worst fears and wildest dreams. No help, no witnesses, and not a minute to lose. When the crisis comes – what would you do?
On a lonely desert road in the dead of night, highway police Angela and Romulo are a team - sort of. Romulo is a shambles. Angela’s all business. But then they stop a speeding car and discover a man stripped to his undershirt and covered in filth.
Part thriller, part black comedy, this play is inspired by events leading to the capture of El Chapo, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, in 2016. But Twenty Minutes With The Devil transcends its original context, opening instead onto a world that is everywhere and nowhere, in an idiom at once strange and familiar. It asks vital questions about law, politics, and justice in the modern world. About the lives and decisions out of our control that seem to hold us all hostage. And the patterns that entrap us in other ways parents and children, myths and beliefs, childhood memories and fantasies of escape.
The fruit of a remarkable collaboration between two writers from very different cultures, here is a fable for the world we live in: a work which takes real problems in the world around us and gives them a vivid imaginative life. By turns suspenseful and reflective, witty, gritty, and poetic, Twenty Minutes With The Devil will grab you by the throat from the very first moment and demand that you, too, make a choice before time runs out.
Live or die, stay or go, trust or betray: we’re all looking for a way out of the locked room of the modern world.
Twenty Minutes With The Devil by Luis Gómez Romero and Desmond Manderson, a new production from The Street, Canberra’s award-winning home of live storytelling and performance in the ACT, opens for a world premiere season on the 18th of June, playing through the 25th of June 2022. Part black comedy, part thriller, part magical realism, the playwrights create a gripping tale of the crisis of justice in our times inspired by the capture of El Chapo, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, in 2016.
ALL DATES:
Friday 17 June 7.30pm (Preview )
Saturday 18 June 7.30pm
Sunday 19 June 4pm
Tuesday 21 June 6.30pm (Mid-Week Special)
Wednesday 22 June 6.30pm (Mid-Week Special)
Thursday 23 June 7.30pm (Mid-Week Special)
Friday 24 - Saturday 25 June 7.30pm
Venue
The Street Theatre, Canberra
15 Childers St, City West ACT 2601
T: (02) 6247 1223