Contemporary Theatre Returns to Katherine—Fresh from Darwin Festival!

In Association with Artback NT and The Last Great Hunt, Godinymayin Presents The Hypotheticals: A Play by Jeffrey Jay Fowler and Sarah Reuben

After a sell-out Darwin Festival 2021 Season, Godinymayin has partnered with Artback NT to present the provocative theatre work The Hypotheticals. This deeply personal story is a work of imagination for the writers and performers, Jeffrey Jay Fowler and Sarah Reuben, as they contemplate their futures—and the future of their (yet to exist) children.

The story begins with two best friends in their mid-30’s—a single woman and a partnered gay man who are deciding whether to have a baby together. She’s the daughter of immigrants, living on unceded land. He’s a middle-class Australian who has grown up in a world that told him he could be anything he dreams of, but he hasn’t really become much. Together they ponder belonging and family’s history—and ask a few salient questions: What does it mean to bring a child into this world that’s burning? And if a man is gay, isn’t that evolution’s way of telling him to step out of the gene pool? But then, isn’t becoming a parent a natural evolutionary instinct? Is it a right? And what happens if you have a child and just get a really annoying one? 

The narrative structure follows a series of “What If?” vignettes based on questions about family and children and human connection. Along the way, the characters cover religious views, the vagaries of baby naming, gender preferences, and even Darwinism. At the heart of the play is a treatise on the bonds between two people, and conventions about relationships built on a sexual and romantic foundation versus a purely platonic and friend-based union.

Winner of the Brown’s Mart Theatre Award in the 2020 NT Literary Awards, with a sold out premiere season at Darwin Festival 2021, The Hypotheticals has proven itself as a singular work of contemporary Australian theatre—a hilarious and savvy exploration of evolution, the human race, fantasy and fear. The production was funded by the Northern Territory Government, the Australian Government through the Australia Council, and Playing Australia. The Hypotheticals is intended for a mature audience, and contains strong language and adult themes.

…what brings this work home is the candid honesty that Fowler and Reuben bring to not only their script, but to their powerhouse performances. —Geoffrey Williams, Stage Whispers