Luke Murphy’s latest work is a gripping dance theatre piece about land, violence, and ownership, developed by the same creative team that delivered 2024 Brisbane Festival favourite Volcano.

Scorched Earth premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival in 2025, travelling to Galway and New York before arriving at Brisbane Festival for its Australian premiere. Set in rural Ireland in the mid-2000s, the work explores themes of identity, ownership, entitlement, and exploitation, informed by historical patterns of violence connected to land disputes in Ireland.

Written, directed, and choreographed by Luke Murphy based on John B. Keane’s 1965 play The Field, Scorched Earth lurches from past to present as a murder case is reopened and the singular suspect is returned to the interrogation room for 24 hours.

Attic Projects’ Scorched Earth. Photo © Teddy Wolff

William Dee, a real estate developer whose family once lived in the area, displaces tenant farmer McCabe and envisions a different use of the land: housing for the residents of the region, which he deems more useful. McCabe, who has worked the land alone for five years and created the value it holds to outsiders like Dee, is unable to...