The exciting young team of theatre-makers from the Flinders Drama Centre, led by young playwright Phillip Kavanagh and director Nescha Jelk, includes a cast of Flinders graduates James Smith, Antoine Jelk, Lucy Lehmann, Ashton Malcolm, Rebecca Mayo, Julie Nixon, Eliza Oliver, Stuart Fong, Andrew Thomas and Alex Woollatt.

Annabel Matheson, Taylor Wiese and Jordan Cortazzo collaborated in the early stages of the play’s development.

The world premiere, in association with Brink Productions, will be performed in an experimental warehouse space at Plant One Bowden near the city from 8-13 March.

“It’s a really ambitious project,” says Kavanagh, who also studied creative writing at Flinders as well as playwriting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

“Since 2013, we’ve workshopped and collaborated with all previous and current actors and cast members to flesh out the five storylines which will converge together in an exploration of the information overload we all face on a daily basis.

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“Our studies at Flinders not only gave us some great training, but created a close, collegiate clan of creative minds to bring this play to fruition.”

Since graduating, Nescha Jelk has become Resident Director at the State Theatre Company, while Phillip Kavanagh has gone from strength to strength since winning the 2011 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award for the best unproduced script for Little Borders.

Deluge explores how our lives are overrun by technology. It is described as being akin to “being in the middle of a text message conversation, while watching a video on YouTube, while scrolling through Facebook, while your housemate tries to engage you in conversation, while you’re reading an article online”.

The concurrent stories features a relationship between two strangers, a young man delivering a prophetic speech he hopes will change the world, an online game taking a deadly turn, a US soldier with a dark secret in Iraqi, and a young woman seeking absolution in God.

“Links begin to emerge between the different mediums, and as you move between them, your brain does a juggling act of clashing information that somehow comes together to form a whole,” says producer Ben Roberts.

Deluge is the first work by new independent theatre company Tiny Bricks—the creative partnership of Nescha Jelk and Phillip Kavanagh.

State Theatre Company chief executive Rob Brookman said the Deluge cast and crew “show all of the makings of the standard bearers for theatre in South Australia in the future”.

Jelk and Kavanagh are among 50 of Flinders’ high-profile creative arts graduates will feature in the Flinders 50 Creatives exhibition at the Festival Centre during the Festival of Arts.

Running from 16 March to 17 April, the exhibition includes leaders from the theatre, film, television, visual arts, publishing, digital media and other communications industries.

For more information go to the Adelaide Festival website for Deluge booking information and Flinders 50 Creatives. Flinders University is also a sponsor of STC Adelaide Festival production Machu Picchu as part of the University’s 50th anniversary year celebrations.