State Theatre Company of SA's 2011 Education production

Season includes metropolitan and regional South Australian tour.

Director: Catherine Fitzgerald

Design Associate: Cassandra Backler

Cast:

Class warfare at its most personal and instinctive, The Zoo Story is a gripping Central Park encounter between a well-to-do businessman and a vagrant.

Peter is a middle-class publishing executive who lives in ignorance of the world outside his settled life. Jerry is an isolated man who lives in a boarding house.

Desperate to have meaningful conversation with another human being, Jerry intrudes on Peter's peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories of his life. The results are explosive.

Written in 1958 and first performed in Berlin in 1959, The Zoo Story is a story of isolation, loneliness, social disparity and dehumanisation in a commercial world, and has become a classic drama of the 20th century.

Lyrical, abrasive, daring and at times humorous, this is a play that questions many of the values that shape our lives. It is State Theatre Company of SA's 2011 Education production.

"The Zoo Story is a dark, comic and deeply disturbing parable about the nature of human relationships and the impossibility of communication in a society of 'have' and 'have nots'," said Director Catherine Fitzgerald.

"Are we all trapped in our own zoo? What will we do to rattle the cages or break down the bars? I look forward to seeing how younger audiences react to the play."