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 secure a loan and is easily outbid at auction. McCabe is left with nothing but a sense of betrayal that the source of his livelihood, and a place he has poured blood, sweat, and tears into, can be taken away with no recourse.

When Dee is found dead at the foot of his newly acquired land – a steep, rocky piece of earth – McCabe is the only suspect, but his neighbours vouch for him. The spectre of a missing donkey haunts the small community more strongly than the death of a human stranger. There is little investigation, and the death is ruled an accident until a national report into land disputes prompts the reopening of the case.

Scorched Earth travels between the interrogation room and the past, highlighting differences between the events unfolding and McCabe’s statements. Absolving the crime of ambiguity with a florid narration by the victim serves mainly as a vehicle for an unexpected dismantlement of the set. This grand design revelation is slowly unveiled by the rising light, and a lengthy, repetitive section of choreography showcases the scenic change and closes the performance.

Attic Projects’ Scorched Earth. Photo © Pato Cassinoni

Scorched Earth is performed by five artists, including Murphy, whose strength and stamina over the 80-minute work are unwavering. Murphy is an extraordinary dancer, simultaneously frenetic and tightly controlled. Group choreography has a fluid contemporary style, performed with strength and grace that frequently suggests movement in slow motion. Line dancing at the local pub and an autopsy duet of Dee’s lifeless body, as well as the theatrical interludes, create variation.

Murphy, as the suspected murderer McCabe, also dances with the land itself; performers encased in textured, mossy suits move around and over him, and at one point he holds several of them aloft at once. Grass and dirt begin to litter the stage as the realism of the crime drama framing cracks, eventually falling away. This fantastical element also inverts the work’s core themes, as the land claims people in life and death.

Set design by Alyson Cummins has an austere, brutalist edge but transitions easily between the stark emptiness of the interrogation room and the warmth of a local pub. Sliding or hinged panels in two-way glass become phone booths, mirrors, and radio station windows.

Lighting design by Stephen Dodd creates the harsh bareness of the interrogation room, neon signage for the bar and the radio station, and the afternoon shadows of the fateful auction. A glaring red 24-hour countdown timer heightens tension and maintains a linear sense of time.

Composition and sound designer Rob Moloney layers acoustic instrumentation, inspired by Irish folk music, with electronics to create a contemporary soundscape interrupted by loud, screeching noises to accompany jump-scare moments.

Audio-visual design by Patricio Cassinoni includes projections that overlap with the setting, flashing crime scene photos, social media screenshots, and official documents with sections bolded for emphasis. However, the final lines of text were sometimes obscured by the set on opening night, in a way that suggested it was misaligned.

Scorched Earth is a thrilling and thoughtful dance theatre work, expanding and inverting genre tropes to explore ideas of place, power, and possession through the lens of Irish identity.

Scorched Earth played at the Powerhouse Theatre from 17–20 September 2026, part of the 2026 Brisbane Festival.