A remarkable theatre marathon following a New York family during the US election is coming to the Perth Festival.

It’s a pretty brave undertaking for both a playwright and an Artistic Director to commit to writing and staging a cycle of three new, as yet unwritten, plays over the course of one year – and not only that, but to resolve to making them absolutely up-to-the minute topical, with revisions to the text happening right up until the opening performance.

The cast of The Gabriels in Hungry. Photo by Joan Marcus

But that’s exactly what Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Nelson did when he embarked on a three-play cycle called The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family. Charting the hopes, fears and disappointments of one American family during the recent US presidential election, the final play premiered in New York on the actual night of the election.

The highly acclaimed cycle will now be performed in its entirety by the original American cast as one of the centrepieces of the Perth International Arts Festival, in an exclusive Australian season.

Nelson has form in this kind of undertaking, having previously written...