IT JUST STOPPED / MYTH, PROPAGANDA AND DISASTER IN NAZI GERMANY AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICA

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?

Extract

Review
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’?

Extract

Awards

2004 VIC Premier's Literary Awards - Louis Esson Prize for Drama 2004 AWGIE Award - Stage Award
Review
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)