Breaker Morant (play)


Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts is a significant Australian play written by Kenneth G. Ross, centred on the court-martial and the last days of Lieutenant Harry "Breaker" Morant of the Bushveldt Carbineers, that was first performed at the Athenaeum Theatre, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on Thursday, 2 February 1978, by the Melbourne Theatre Company.
Described at the time as an "interesting, though underwritten biographical study", the first performance of the play was directed and designed by John Sumner, the founding director of the Melbourne Theatre Company.

First performance

The cast of the first performance of the play, directed and designed by John Sumner, on 2 February 1978 were:

Conversion to a movie

The script of Ross's play was almost immediately converted into the screenplay for Bruce Beresford's 1980 film Breaker Morant.
The screenplay of the film, to which Ross had made a considerable contribution as a writer, was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.