Unitec presents the 2017 Graduation Play
Canto XXVI

Unitec’s third year acting students have devised their graduation play Canto XXVI under the direction of renowned theatre practitioner and actor John Bolton. 

We are lost in a dark wood, the right road gone. Alone and scared we see our Paradise but are prevented from going there. Before we reach it we must pass through Hell and Purgatory.

The rungs of Hell are many, they are bespoke, they suit our time and place, they are measured for our personality and offer us the perfect punishment for our character. From the over intimate family to the suicidal and the misogynistic, from the warmongers to the social sheep, universal and deeply personal forms of Hell are exposed with generosity and bravura.  It is fun to play in the dark so as well as frightening images and scenes there are plenty of laughs along the way.

In Purgatory we wait, for what we know not, but we wait and comply with the rules and last it out, understanding just enough to keep us alive to our circumstances.  

We arrive to find that Paradise is not a sentimental upland where the lambs lay down with the lions, it is not even a destination, but a state like Hell and Purgatory that comes and goes It is rigorous and dry, it is clear. We have vision and see that there is no narrative at all. All the stories that have ever been told of the horrors, loves and beauties we experience on this small blue dot spinning in space are flashes of lightning in the darkness.