ORWELL: The Road to 1984 tells the fascinating story of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the extraordinary personal experiences that inspired his classic tales Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It 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?

In this powerful and moving play, 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.

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie I want to expose.” George Orwell

In this age of misinformation, political extremism and digital surveillance, ORWELL: The Road to 1984 is a play for our time.

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