It Just Stopped
A savage comedy of manners,
It Just Stopped explores our relationship to art, globalisation, death, technology, America, Campari, cardboard boxes and slavery. Sewell’s play is funny and shocking in turn. It holds the mirror up to the things we value today and asks the questions: what will we value the day the world just stops, and what would we be willing to trade for our own survival?
To describe Stephen Sewell's dark comedy as a cautionary tale does it scant justice, given the anger and apocalyptic vision driving its mayhem and fun. It Just Stopped
is a whimsical, argumentative, satirical and deeply serious play—among Sewell’s finest.
Bryce Hallett, Sydney Morning Herald
Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America
Written with searing passion and dazzling momentum,
Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America
reverberates with the aftershocks of September 11. With compelling
drive and theatrical daring, we are swept from cocktails at the
Guggenheim to the hungry vacuum of Ground Zero. Stephen Sewell demands
answers to some of the most urgent questions of our times. Where is the
line between patriotism and nationalism? What happens when the Land of
the Free makes such uncompromising statements as: ‘You’re either with
us or against us’?
Sewell's
play is both fictionally gripping and politically stimulating, with its
echoes of Kafka, Oleanna and Pakula's The Parallax View…
Michael Billington, The Guardian (UK)
Education Resource Notes for
It Just Stopped are available from the
Malthouse Theatre.
The notes include interviews with key artists, playwrights and
directors plus activities and questions for discussion and analysis. For more information go to
malthousetheatre.com.au.