Gene Tree: Listen. Now. Again
DARWIN
17 - 21 July 2025
Presented by St Martins and Corrugated Iron Youth arts
‘Do we have to have hope to evolve?’
An ode to the planet, a call to attention, Darwin’s young people lead Darwin Fringe audiences on an interactive performance adventure through the George Brown Botanic Gardens.
Following an award-winning premiere season in Melbourne, Gene Tree: Listen. Now. Again comes to life afresh in a collaboration between two of Australia’s leading youth theatre companies, St Martins and Corrugated Iron Youth Arts, reimagined with over 50 of Darwin’s children, young people, and artists.
In Gene Tree, young people ask ‘impossible questions’ about evolution, adaptation and hope. Audiences are invited into small moments: feet on the grass, back against a tree, face in the wind. Music, rhythm and projections interlace with children’s stories of connection to nature, adaptation and change. Featuring Corrugated Iron’s Company C, students from Ludmilla Primary School, and Darwin Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists, Gene Tree immerses audiences inside a chorus of children’s voices, dreaming futures together within the nooks and crannies of the Gardens.
Darwin Fringe is the first stop on St Martins’ concept tour for Gene Tree, which enables young people to adapt and evolve the show with their own words, stories, melodies, rhythms and ideas and share it their own communities, in their own place of nature — a living, growing performance experience tracing pathways of care and connection across our planet.
Dates / 17, 18 & 21 July
Time/ 5.30 pm
Duration / 1 hour 30 mins
Tickets / $20 / Adult, $10 / Concession, $10 / 12 & under
Location / George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens
This performance takes place outside. Please dress for the weather and bring appropriate footwear.
Relaxed performance and access guide
Cast and Creatives
Performers / Young people from Corrugated Iron’s Company C, Ludmilla Primary School, and Darwin Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists’ Program aged between 8 and 18 years old.
Concept, Composer / Elissa Goodrich
Originating Director / Nadja Kostich
Darwin Director / Benhur Helwend
Set / Nature
Lighting / The Sun
Production Design / Emily Barrie and Rachel Burke
Video Design / Michael Carmody
ABOUT ST MARTINS YOUTH ARTS CENTRE
St Martins is a Melbourne-based youth arts company with a national reputation for making original and bold contemporary performances, inviting audiences into the real, potent, and poignant worlds that concern young people. Its methodology of working with children aged 5-18 and exceptional artists in deep and collaborative processes is key to achieving astonishing performance outcomes. Over the past decade, St Martins’ public performances have garnered multiple industry awards and accolades, including two Green Room Awards for Gene Tree in 2022.
ABOUT CORRUGATED IRON YOUTH ARTS
Corrugated Iron is the Northern Territory’s leading youth arts company. It engages, trains, mentors and employs emerging artists and creative professionals who inspire children and young people to develop their skills and forge pathways in the arts. Corrugated Iron inspires the NOW generation of creative leaders, movers and shakers to take the lead in shaping its artistic program to ensure that it is driven by the voices of young people.
‘We invite you to embrace silence, even in the midst of all this sound. Silence isn’t the absence of something but the presence of everything, it’s a way of paying attention.’
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Gene Tree: Listen. Now. Again has also been made possible due to the contribution of the JumpStart! grant from VicHealth and an Annual Arts grant from the City of Melbourne.
St Martins also acknowledges the support we have received from the Besen Family Foundation and the Robert Salzer Foundation in funding this project.
