Shon Ho

The 22nd century may be a little while off, but Western Sydney based arts company CuriousWorks has taken a chance on what future Australia could look like. It’s not exactly pretty: the impacts of climate change are devastating, personal freedoms have been savaged and the line between government and business has eroded almost entirely. This is the vision presented in CuriousWorks’ epic narrative project Colony: a tapestry of tales that follows a single family over 15 generations from pre-colonial times to an imagined future in the 22nd century. Artistic director Shakthi Shakthidharan (also one of the artistic directors of the new National Theatre of Parramatta) describes Colony as “a Marvel universe set in Western Sydney but with ordinary heroes instead of super heroes”. “I’m really interested in how we can create something that audiences will come back to on repeated occasions,” he says. The Colony project will span a number of years across a series of artistic productions. The first instalment, When the Tide Comes In, kicked off in March at Carriageworks, and continues this month with an event at Riverside Theatres on June 22. Subsequent parts will be released throughout this year, both online and via live performances. Set in the imagined future, When The Tide ComesIn uses film, prose, music and illustration to explore the story of Sam: a young woman on a mission to untangle the threads of the past and unearth the secrets of her family history. Each part of Colony can stand