From the intimate to the epic, the classical to the radical and the playful to the political, State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2026 season – the first from new Artistic Director Petra Kalive – is a supercharged assortment of vivid theatre experiences.
Kalive’s inaugural season is a collection of world premieres, modern Australian masterworks and new takes on classics from the Western canon. “The works in 2026 are each vital in their own way. They hold a mirror to our cultural and political present; you’ll squirm, laugh, and question in the same breath,” says Kalive.
“This season celebrates the richness of voices shaping our stages today, the clarity of early-career writers breaking through with bold new perspectives, the craft of Australia’s most celebrated performers, the tender, necessary stories of South Australian artists weaving culture and memory into the present and the thrill of international works that bring the world to our doorstep.”
Season 2026 opens with the cutting satire Trophy Boys – a whip smart and riotous takedown of toxic masculinity by award-winning young playwright Emmanuelle Mattana. Performed by a female and non-binary cast in drag, the show unfolds in real time as an all-boys private school debate team are locked in a classroom for their one-hour prep window and forced to argue that “feminism has failed women”. The sold-out smash opens at the Space Theatre in March and heads on a regional/outer metro tour with Country Arts SA following a hit run across the country and off-Broadway.
Later in March, the brilliant Heather Mitchell revives her award-winning and critically acclaimed “virtuosic performance” (The Conversation) of U.S. Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Suzie Miller’s RBG: Of Many, One. From the pen of the playwright who brought us Prima Facie, Miller’s RBG charts the legal trailblazer’s journey from Brooklyn schoolgirl to the highest court in America in a fiercely intelligent and surprisingly funny piece of solo theatre. The Sydney Theatre Company production plays a 4-week season in the Dunstan Playhouse.
In May, Adelaide powerhouse Carla Lippis and Prisoner’s Glenda Linscott star in a radically imagined and provocative new production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Artistic Director Petra Kalive directs this new take on Wilde’s 130-year-old play about deception, identity, class and desire with an exciting all South Australian cast including Caroline Mignone (Sense and Sensibility), Nathan O’Keefe (Kimberly Akimbo), Anna Linder (The Puzzle) and newcomers Teddy Dunn, Connor Pullinger and Pia Gillings.
In May, Richard Roxburgh, Ryan Corr and Adelaide’s own Damon Herriman star in ART, Yasmina Reza’s internationally award-winning comedy about friendship, ego and the chaos a single opinion can cause. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play and the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, ART plays for a strictly limited five-day season at Her Majesty’s Theatre.
In July comes the groundbreaking and utterly unhinged Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner, a deliriously overstimulating remix of Anton Chekhov’s classic play from the mind of local award-winning theatremaker Mary Angley and her creative team of collaborators at Paper Mouth Theatre.
Part of the Company’s new SPARK program, an all-new program of independent work presented in the Main Theatre at the Adelaide College of the Arts, the production begins as a faithful production of Chekhov’s play and spirals into a theatrical endurance ride. Part experiment, part tragic farce, part viral hallucination, Chekhovian despair is dragged kicking and screaming into our current attention economy in this genre bending, gender-bending live performance and love letter to long theatre.
Landing at Space Theatre in July is the world premiere of Kaurna and Narungga theatremaker Jacob Boehme’s LOGAN ST, inspired by the Kaurna history behind Adelaide’s own Logan Street and the Adelaide Mosque, Australia’s oldest city Mosque. In LOGAN ST, an unlikely friendship takes root between Goolie, an Afghan cameleer and mosque caretaker, and Dulcie, a young Aboriginal woman. As war, racism and bureaucracy press in from all sides, their bond – anchored in storytelling, cooking and kinship – becomes an act of survival.
Woven through this tender contemporary narrative is the haunting story of Munarto, a Kaurna girl who lives through the devastation of colonisation in 1836. As past and present echo and collide, LOGAN ST reveals the resilience of culture, the cost of silence, and a quiet revolution of friendship that begins in a garden where nothing will grow.
Another Australian premiere work follows with Commentary, a dark comedy from Helpmann Award nominated playwright Ash Flanders. Directed by Petra Kalive, Commentary stars Gyton Grantley (Underbelly, House Husbands) as Nick, a filmmaker-turned-film-lecturer whose successful, and controversial, film from 20 years ago is making a resurgence at a local International Film Festival. A confronting and timely story about facing the past – and the public – Commentary sharply interrogates the ethics of artmaking, accountability, and memory in an era of public reckoning.
SA emerging playwright Anthony Nocera’s riotously funny Log Boy premieres in October, starring Chris Asimos and Elena Carapetis. From the 2025 Great Australian Bites to AC Arts in all its gory, leather-clad full-length form as part of the SPARK program, Log Boy is a camp, kinky collision of horror, humour and heartbreak from one of Australia’s most exciting new writers. A deliriously dark, heart-stabbing, and hilarious queer ghost story about the demons we can’t quite exorcise, Log Boy, from Nocera’s new theatre collective Smiling Bear, is a love letter to leather queens, nelly bottoms, and anyone who’s ever been ghosted by grief.
Season 2026 closes with the glorious Heartbreak Choir, a tenderly funny ode to kindness, courage and community with an all-star SA cast including Libby O’Donovan, Genevieve Mooy and Emma Beech. Filled with big-hearted characters, The Heartbreak Choir is a gently funny, deeply moving celebration of connection, second chances, and the small, defiantly hopeful ways we show up for one another.
The year 2026 will also plant the seed of new initiative Blak State – a bold and long-term commitment to First Nations theatre-making. An investment in long-term cultural change, the program – supported by Create SA – will begin with a state-wide period of listening and consultation led by First Nations artists, Elders and cultural leaders, who will define the stories, structures and ways of working that reflect sovereignty, cultural futures and community priorities.
Kalive says she is excited to present her inaugural season and get to know South Australian audiences. “This program signals not just a project, but a way of working that will shape the company for years to come,” say Kalive.
“What excites me most is the opportunities for SA artists in this season and the range of works: from the intimate to the epic, the classical to the radical, the joyful to the tragic. Each work asks us to gather, to think, to laugh, to be moved, and to walk back into the world seeing it just a little differently.”
Subscriptions to State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2026 season are now on sale. For more information, visit: www.statetheatrecompany.com.au for details.
Images: Artistic Director Petra Kalive – photo by Claudio Raschella | Trophy Boys – photo by Claudio Raschella | The Importance of Being Earnest – photo by Claudio Raschella | LOGAN ST. – photo by Claudio Raschella | Gyton Grantley stars in Commentary – photo by Claudio Raschella | The Heartbreak Choir – photo by Claudio Raschella