Colony: When the Tide Comes In

After launching at Carriageworks, the ambitious and innovative Colony project has expanded its grand narrative into music, film, and graphic novel-style visuals. The next live event at Riverside Theatres is an audio-visual concert with the next chapters in the story being told through film, live music and character narration, animation and large screen illustrations.

An imaginary, speculative Western Sydney in the 22^nd century is the setting for the stunningly original audio-visual concert being performed at Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres in June. When the Tide Comes In tells the story of Sam, a young woman struggling under the impact of climate change, social division and restricted personal freedom that even one hundred years in the future is not that far removed from the world we live in today.

Sam has grown up in a compound with her community of ‘Settlers’, where their actions and thoughts are overseen by a more technologically-advanced section of society. She has never known a mother, but she is haunted by spectres of her ancestors. After the death of her brilliant but reclusive father, Sam is left with his mess of illustrations documenting her family’s history. She sets out on an unusual and dangerous mission to discover the truth of her past.

When the Tide Comes In was launched by the Western Sydney arts company CuriousWorks in March as a web series, with new chapters added monthly since. The June concert can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story in its own right, or as the latest chapters in Sam’s mission, told through live music integrated with a character narration and a ‘graphic novel’ backdrop of illustrations, film and animation.