{"id":199754,"date":"2025-10-09T06:55:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199754\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T06:55:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T06:55:27","slug":"state-theatre-company-south-australia-reveals-a-season-of-joyful-playful-and-political-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199754\/","title":{"rendered":"State Theatre Company South Australia reveals a season of joyful, playful and political theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"STCSAFrom the intimate to the epic, the classical to the radical and the playful to the political, State Theatre Company South Australia\u2019s 2026 season<\/a> \u2013 the first from new Artistic Director Petra Kalive \u2013 is a supercharged assortment of vivid theatre experiences.<\/p>\n

Kalive\u2019s inaugural season is a collection of world premieres, modern Australian masterworks and new takes on classics from the Western canon. \u201cThe works in 2026 are each vital in their own way. They hold a mirror to our cultural and political present; you\u2019ll squirm, laugh, and question in the same breath,\u201d says Kalive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"STCSASeason 2026 opens with the cutting satire Trophy Boys<\/a> \u2013 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 \u201cfeminism has failed women\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

Later in March, the brilliant Heather Mitchell revives her award-winning and critically acclaimed \u201cvirtuosic performance\u201d (The Conversation) of U.S. Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Suzie Miller\u2019s RBG: Of Many, One<\/a>. From the pen of the playwright who brought us Prima Facie, Miller\u2019s RBG charts the legal trailblazer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"STCSAIn May, Adelaide powerhouse Carla Lippis and Prisoner\u2019s Glenda Linscott star in a radically imagined and provocative new production of Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Importance of Being Earnest<\/a>. Artistic Director Petra Kalive directs this new take on Wilde\u2019s 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\u2019Keefe (Kimberly Akimbo), Anna Linder (The Puzzle) and newcomers Teddy Dunn, Connor Pullinger and Pia Gillings.<\/p>\n

In May, Richard Roxburgh, Ryan Corr and Adelaide\u2019s own Damon Herriman star in ART<\/a>, Yasmina Reza\u2019s 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\u2019s Theatre.<\/p>\n

In July comes the groundbreaking and utterly unhinged Uncle Vanya \u2013 but there\u2019s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner<\/a>, a deliriously overstimulating remix of Anton Chekhov\u2019s classic play from the mind of local award-winning theatremaker Mary Angley and her creative team of collaborators at Paper Mouth Theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Part of the Company\u2019s new SPARK<\/a> 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"STCSALanding at Space Theatre in July is the world premiere of Kaurna and Narungga theatremaker Jacob Boehme\u2019s LOGAN ST<\/a>, inspired by the Kaurna history behind Adelaide\u2019s own Logan Street and the Adelaide Mosque, Australia\u2019s 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 \u2013 anchored in storytelling, cooking and kinship \u2013 becomes an act of survival.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"STCSAAnother Australian premiere work follows with Commentary<\/a>, 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 \u2013 and the public \u2013 Commentary sharply interrogates the ethics of artmaking, accountability, and memory in an era of public reckoning.<\/p>\n

SA emerging playwright Anthony Nocera\u2019s riotously funny Log Boy<\/a> 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\u2019s most exciting new writers. A deliriously dark, heart-stabbing, and hilarious queer ghost story about the demons we can\u2019t quite exorcise, Log Boy, from Nocera\u2019s new theatre collective Smiling Bear, is a love letter to leather queens, nelly bottoms, and anyone who\u2019s ever been ghosted by grief.<\/p>\n

\"STCSASeason 2026 closes with the glorious Heartbreak Choir<\/a>, a tenderly funny ode to kindness, courage and community with an all-star SA cast including Libby O\u2019Donovan, 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.<\/p>\n

The year 2026 will also plant the seed of new initiative Blak State \u2013 a bold and long-term commitment to First Nations theatre-making. An investment in long-term cultural change, the program \u2013 supported by Create SA \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Kalive says she is excited to present her inaugural season and get to know South Australian audiences. \u201cThis program signals not just a project, but a way of working that will shape the company for years to come,\u201d say Kalive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subscriptions to State Theatre Company South Australia\u2019s 2026 season are now on sale. For more information, visit: www.statetheatrecompany.com.au<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n

Images: Artistic Director Petra Kalive \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella | Trophy Boys \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella | The Importance of Being Earnest \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella |\u00a0LOGAN ST. \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella | Gyton Grantley stars in Commentary \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella | The Heartbreak Choir \u2013 photo by Claudio Raschella<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the intimate to the epic, the classical to the radical and the playful to the political, State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,4100,4097,4094,4095,4102,4101,647,4093,4091,4103,44,4092,4099,4090,4105,4089,4098,4104,4096],"class_list":{"0":"post-199754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-belvoir","11":"tag-circus-1903","12":"tag-fortyfivedownstairs","13":"tag-grayson-perry","14":"tag-kinky-boots","15":"tag-la-boite-theatre","16":"tag-melbourne","17":"tag-midsumma","18":"tag-miss-saigon","19":"tag-moulin-rouige","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-ngv","22":"tag-opera-australia","23":"tag-publication-media","24":"tag-rocky-horror","25":"tag-theatre","26":"tag-tina-turner","27":"tag-todd-mckenney","28":"tag-yayoi-kusama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}