Belvoir: Life Of Galileo

"They try to flay you with statistics, whip you with numbers, hide behind the tyranny of mathematics. But I say, nothing's hidden. Open your eyes." - Galileo

From 3rd August to 15th September, Belvoir will present Brecht's classic play of truth, lies and science, with the great Colin Friels starring as the revolutionary scientist in Life of Galileo. Belvoir St Theatre will be completely re-configured in the round with a full re-design and construction exclusively for this remarkable production.

Directed by the 2019 Helpmann Award nominated Belvoir Artistic Director Eamon Flack (Counting and Cracking), Life of Galileo is a portrait of a man who realises the entire system is based on lies - and his backdown when the forces of money and orthodoxy threaten him. Has the great Galileo betrayed science and the future? Or has he just found a more subtle way of speaking truth to power?

The story of one man's lonely and heroic stand against the forces of authority, Life of Galileo is an eerily prescient and unmissable play about the tensions between the pursuit of knowledge, and the power of official ideology.

"In the popular mind, theatre is synonymous with "faking it", when actually theatre is one of the few crucibles of truth left, and the world outside is a pack of comfortable convenient lies." said Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack "It's no coincidence that Galileo's battle against the church and Brecht's battle against nutbag ideology are the best guide to truth and lies in public life today.

At a time when governments just make up numbers this play is an invigorating dose of honesty. Its central character's love of facts, free thought, our capacity for working out better ways of doing things, is just such a relief. More truth!"

Life of Galileo stars Ayeesha Ash (Bell Shakespeare's The Players), Peter Carroll (An Enemy of the People, STC's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), Colin Friels (Dance of Death, Faith Healer), introducing WAAPA graduate Miranda Parker, Damien Ryan (Sport for Jove's Othello, Bell Shakespeare's As You Like It), Damien Strouthos (Bell Shakespeare's The Miser, The Merchant of Venice), 2019 Helpmann Award nominee Vaishnavi Suryaprakash (Counting and Cracking) Sonia Todd (TV's Rake, Janet King) and Rajan Velu (Counting and Cracking).

Supported by the Nelson Meers Foundation.