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Sophia=(Wisdom): The Cliffs

10 - 27 January 2024
New Theatre, Sydney

Rhoda, a local artist in Potatoland, is struggling to keep her relationship with her husband Max interesting. In a nightmarish dreamscape, she conjures replica versions of themselves, inviting them into their home through the spiritual invocation of Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom. When this second Rhoda and this second Max enter their cliffside home, Rhoda is forced to decide between whether to confront or to flee the mayhem she has introduced. Only the abominable snowman and a group of factory workers stand in the way of her escape.
 
Part dada, slapstick comedy; part philosophical vaudeville interrogation into the human psyche and fully a production of the true avant-garde. This mind-bending play throws its five misfit central characters into an opulent madcap world of gang violence, sexual awakening and human eroticism.

SOPHIA=(WISDOM): THE CLIFFS is the archetype of Foreman’s uniquely stylized theatre which employs an unconventional fusion of art forms to evoke another world on stage. Characterized by complex interplays and tensions between spoken language and visual tableaux, with actors functioning like objects in a series of impactful still-lifes, Foreman’s play eschews dramatic narrative action in favour of a funhouse of human creatures cluttered amongst dreamlike curios.

Poster of Sophia=(Wisdom): The Cliffs

'STRANGE. ABSURD. INSPIRED.
YOU WON'T FORGET PATRICK KENNEDY'S
FIRST AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION.'

STAGE WHISPERS

'PIONEERING EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE'

SYDNEY ARTS GUIDE

'AN EXCELLENT, INTRIGUING,
RADICALLY SURREAL AND GROUNDBREAKING PRODUCTION'

SYDNEY THEATRE REVIEWS

'STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL AND ULTIMATELY
TRANSFORMATIVE.
YOU WON'T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.'

THE FOURTH WALL

'AN IMPRESSIVE, UNPREDICTABLE, INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS AND
VISUALLY ARRESTING LABOUR OF LOVE.'

THEATRENOW

Patrick Kennedy Theatre Machine acknowledges and is guided by the allodial owners of the land that we meet on.

We pay our respects to the 29 clans of the Eora nation and recognise elders past and present, as well as all the First Nations people of Australia.

© 2025 by PATRICK KENNEDY THEATRE MACHINE

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