This moving and powerful one-man play is a timely portrait of a writer whose words remain a warning - and a hope.
George Orwell is perhaps the most influential English writer of the twentieth century.
His classic tales Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four which warn of the dangers of totalitarianism - erosion of free speech, abuse of power, increasing control of all aspects of our everyday lives - resonate now more than ever.
Orwell’s dystopian concepts such as 'Big Brother is watching you', 'Room 101' and 'thoughtcrime' have become everyday phrases.
But where did his vision of the future come from?
Actor MARK STRATFORD takes you on a fascinating journey through the extraordinary experiences that shaped the work of this perceptive and compelling writer.
In Orwell’s words, we travel through many of the remarkable episodes in his life including his time at a grim boarding school, being a police officer in colonial Burma, his adventures tramping through England to live among the poor and underprivileged, and his extraordinarily close shave with death in the Spanish Civil War.
Mark has previously performed at the Camden Fringe in his one-man plays The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which he adapted from the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson) and Macready! Dickens’ Theatrical Friend (which tells the fascinating true story of the great Victorian actor-manager, William Charles Macready – the man to whom Dickens dedicated Nicholas Nickelby).
He's currently part-way through a tour of ORWELL: The Road to 1984 which is being performed at pub theatres, literary festivals and studio venues all over England.
In this age of misinformation, political extremism and digital surveillance this is certainly a play for our time!