In 2016, State Theatre Company will play on stages across South Australia, around the country and, for the first time ever, in London. The 2016 season sees 6 co-productions amongst the 10 show season, reaffirming the Company’s position in the national theatre sphere and nurturing a new relationship with leading UK company Frantic Assembly.

Two years of development with Frantic Assembly will come to fruition in 2016, taking State Theatre Company to London with the world premiere of Things I Know To Be True, a new work by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell.

Artistic Director Geordie Brookman (pictured right, photographer James Hartley) said, “The 2016 Season is one of our strongest yet. It retains the company’s commitment to new Australian writing and our South Australian artists as well as bringing some of the best of the best from around the country to create work right here in Adelaide.”

The 2016 season sees the company work with some of Australia’s leading artists. Gold Logie award-winning actress Lisa McCune will make her State Theatre Company debut in Machu Picchu. Catherine McClements will return to the company to star in The Events, and Paul Capsis (pictured below) will return after his critically acclaimed performance in the 2014 production Little Bird. State Theatre Company local favourites Paul Blackwell and Nathan O’Keefe grace the stage in 2016, along with exciting emerging talents Tilda Cobham- Hervey (52 Tuesdays and One Eyed Girl) and James Smith (Volpone).

The season opens with a co-production with Belvoir Theatre and Malthouse Theatre, The Events, starring Catherine McClements, which will premiere at the Sydney Festival in January. It will then feature as part of the Adelaide Festival before returning to Sydney for a Belvoir season and on to Melbourne to close its Australian tour at Malthouse.

A brand new Australian play, Machu Picchu, will be co-produced with Sydney Theatre Company. Sue Smith’s new work, starring Lisa McCune, will open in Sydney before transferring to the Dunstan Playhouse for an Adelaide season.

State Theatre Company will partner with Queensland’s La Boite Theatre Company for the first time to bring New York playwright Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men to the Australian stage for the first time.

Artistic Director Geordie Brookman said, “The diversity and depth of our local theatre sector is something we love to celebrate, and we’re delighted that in 2016 we’ll get to play with a number of South Australia’s best and brightest companies.”

Tartuffe will see the company team up with Brink Productionsand Rumpelstiltskin revives the Company’s highly successful partnership with Windmill Theatre. The company will also collaborate closely with Country Arts SA to tour both The Red Cross Letters and its Education production Gorgon to regional South Australia.

“With something to delight every theatrical tastebud the 2016 year will see the Company traverse the stages of Australia while also touring to London for the first time. I hope it once again puts theatre at the heart of cultural activity in South Australia.” Geordie Brookman said.

In the last three years, State Theatre Company has regularly exported its productions around the country, co-producing with companies interstate and touring within regional South Australia.

CEO and Producer Rob Brookman said extending the life of works maximises the significant creative and financial investment that we put into every one of the company’s productions.

“Not only do co-productions bring new energy to creative collaborations, they also provide fantastic opportunities for South Australian artists to strut their stuff on the national stage and very significantly extends periods of employment for our fine cohort of actors, directors, and designers, making it more viable for them to continue to live and work in South Australia,” Rob Brookman said.

www.statetheatrecompany.com.au

THE PRODUCTIONS

The Events

By David Greig

A co-production with Belvoir Theatre and Malthouse Theatre

Directed by Clare Watson

Cast includes Catherine McClements

Her Majesty’s Theatre

25 February - 05 March 2016

Written in response to the murders in Norway committed in 2011 by Anders Breivik, award-winning Scottish playwright David Greig ’s play follows 
a community’s search for compassion, peace and understanding in the wake of unthinkable violence.

It is performed with a different local community choir on stage each night

Catherine McClements (Rush, Water Rats) is looking forward to the opportunity of working on stage with a choir. She said, “The atmosphere and emotional impact that a group of singers can give to a performance is almost impossible to replicate with acting alone.”

David Greig’s script tells the story of a priest, Claire, who, when she survives a massacre, sets out on a quest to answer the most difficult question of all - ‘why?’ It’s a journey that takes her to the edge of reason, science, politics and faith. This play asks big questions: how far can forgiveness stretch in the face of atrocity? How can we live together knowing that it can all come apart in an instant?

Photo of Catherine McClements © James Hartley

Machu Picchu

By Sue Smith.

Directed by Geordie Brookman

Cast includes Lisa McCune, Elena Carapetis, Darren Gilshenan and Annabel Matheson.

Set design: Jonathon Oxlade

Lighting design: Nigel Levings

Composer: Alan John

Sound Designer: Andrew Howard

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

13 April - 1 May

Machu Picchu follows Paul and Gabby, two mid-life civil engineers who seem to have it all. After a horrifying car accident Gabby walks away unscathed but Paul is badly injured and their lives are forever changed. Both are forced to reassess priorities, and reevaluate long held dreams. They must also fight to maintain their personal connection and in many ways learn not only how to love again but also how to simply....be.

Exploring mindfulness, altruism and the challenge of staying true to yourself, Machu Picchu slips back and forth over the history of an ordinary – and extraordinary – love story. It’s a celebration of courage that explodes the belief that bad things only happen to other people. And asks a question: when catastrophe strikes, and the normal clutter of life is stripped away, can something purer and more precious be found?

Photo of Lisa McCune © James Hartley

Things I Know To Be True

By Andrew Bovell

Directed by Geordie Brookman & Scott Graham

Cast includes Paul Blackwell, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Eugenia Fragos and Nathan O’Keefe

Set & lighting designer: Geoff Cobham

Costume designer: Ailsa Paterson

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

13 May - 04 June

State Theatre Company will enter into its first international co-production in 2016, with London-based physical theatre company Frantic Assembly. Things I Know To Be True is a brand new commissioned work by leading Australian writer Andrew Bovellthat will have its world premiere in Adelaide, before seasons in Canberra and the UK.

Epic in existential scope while deeply human in focus, Bovell’s play tells the story of the Price family, who appear to be living the Australian dream – a loving household in a solid brick house on a quarter acre block where the passing
of time is measured by the seasonal changes in working class patriarch Bob’s beloved roses. The four kids have grown up and spread their wings, with only the youngest, Rosie, still at home. As the seasons turn, their story becomes darker and more difficult. But with complexity comes richness, resolution and meaning.

Photo of Tilda Cobham-Hervey © James Hartley

Rumpelstiltskin

By Rosemary Myers and Julianne O’Brien, based on the tale by the Brothers Grimm

Director: Rosemary Myers

Designer: Jonathon Oxlade

Composer & musical director: Jethro Woodward

Cast includes Paul Capsis

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

11 October - 30 October 2016

Spinning straw into gold is a party trick that will take you far. It can buy you a big house full of beautiful things, a wardrobe of designer clothes and a life of total luxury. But money, as they say, can’t buy you happiness.

Two people, once best friends, torn apart by desire for the things they cannot have. This is the story of the ultimate price of greed. Mercurial Paul Capsis stars as a shape-shifting imp Rumplestiltskin, whose thirst for vengeance may well bring him undone.

Director Rose Myers said, “Writing with Paul Capsis in mind is an absolute inspiration, and in the development of the work, ideas have been flowing thick and fast. We love taking these classic fairytales and making them come alive for today with great contemporary twists. Expect high fashion, high stakes and lots of Paul Capsis’ trademark earth-shattering high notes.”

“Rumplestiltskin was the first live show I ever saw as a child. It left a mark on me. The magic of the theatre. Storytelling. I was bedazzled,” Paul Capsis said

“To be working with one of my all-time favourite directors, Rosemary Myers, in a fairy tale new telling of such a classic is beyond awesome.”

Photo of Paul Capsis by Shane Reid.

The 39 Steps

Adapted by Patrick Barlow

Directed byJon Halpin

Cast includes Charles Mayer and Tim Overton

Designer: Ailsa Paterson

Lighting designer: Geoff Cobham

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

19 August - 11 September

The 39 Steps is an adaptation of John Buchan’s classic novel and Hitchcock’s hit film to create a piece that is equal parts farce, clowning and heart-stopping noir thriller.

The debonair Richard Hannay is pulled into a web of intrigue and deceit after attending a vaudeville show in London. Pursued by a shadowy organisation throughout the UK, entranced by femme fatales and twisted into knots by skulduggery and suspicion, Hannay must solve the mystery of The 39 Steps and save his skin before it is too late.

Director Jon Halpin said “I’m a huge fan of Patrick Barlow’s work, he truly is a master of comedy in the modern age. I’ve been fortunate enough to direct another of his plays, The Messiah - twice! Once in 2002 and then in 2006.

“The 39 Steps is a truly remarkable achievement - it stays very true to the film, it respects the cinematic achievements of the movie, and yet it is one of the silliest, funniest shows you’re ever likely to see. I can’t wait for rehearsals to start.”

Photo: Charles Mayer

Straight White Men

By Young Jean Lee

Directed by Nescha Jelk

Cast includes Roger Newcombe, Hugh Parker, Chris Pitman and Lucas Stibbard

Designer: Victoria Lamb

Lighting designer: Ben Hughes

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

1 - 23 July 2016

Straight White Men tells the story of the widowed Ed who welcomes home his three middle aged sons for Christmas. The eldest Matt has moved back in after losing his way, while life also holds its challenges for younger brothers Jake and Drew. They enjoy brotherly banter and nostalgic re-hashing of childhood pranks. But amongst the hijinks, trash-talk and smart-arse repartee, they must confront a problem that even being a happy family can’t solve: when identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the real value of being a straight, white man?

Director Nescha Jelk said, “Young Jean Lee is one of the most exciting playwrights to come out of America at the moment and with Straight White Men you can easily see why. It is a funny, quirky and compassionate family drama that boldly wrestles with big ideas. I can’t wait to share it Adelaide audiences.”

The production marks State Theatre Company’s first ever collaboration with Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company and will open in Adelaide before transferring to the Roundhouse for a Brisbane season.

Photo: Roger Newcombe

Tartuffe

By Molière, adapted by Phillip Kavanagh

A co-production with Brink Productions

Directed by Chris Drummond

Cast includes Paul Blackwell, Nathan O’Keefe, Jacqy Phillips and Rory Walker

Designer: Nigel Levings

Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

4 - 20 November 2016

First performed in 1664, Molière’s classic comedy combines adultery, betrayal, seduction, lies and deceit with the precisely organised chaos of farce.

Orgon leads a blissful, happy life. His extravagant and wealthy lifestyle is perfectly complemented by a marriage to a much younger woman. His daughter is engaged and his son is in love. But when he welcomes the deceptively slick Tartuffe into his family, he unwittingly injects his home with a lethal dose of chaos. Nothing is off limits as Tartuffe exploits Orgon to pilfer his fortune and attempt the seduction of his wife and his daughter.

Artistic Director Geordie Brookman said “Brink have been at the forefront of adventurous theatrical work in Adelaide for almost two decades and are led by a very special director in the shape of Chris Drummond. To reunite him with some of his key collaborators on Molière’s masterpiece was an irresistible proposition.”

Photo of Nathan O'Keefe & Chris Drummond © James Hartley
 

STATE ED SHOW

Gorgon

By Elena Carapetis

Directed by Nescha Jelk

Cast includes James Smith

Lighting designer: Chris Petridis

Composer: Will Spartalis

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

3 - 7 May 2016

A theatrical thrill-ride, Gorgon looks at the tricky dividing line between friendship and love, anger and grief. It tells the story of two best mates, invulnerable in their final year of school: they are young and beautiful, tanned and strong. On one fateful night they are drunk and high, driving on the highway. Life shatters and only one is left to pick up the pieces.

Playwright Elena Carapetis describes the play as being about young people from this city, though the themes transcend beyond our streets. “Audiences will recognise the streets, the sights, the sounds of the place we grew up in. But though it’s about a small city, its emotional landscape is as epic as the world of the Greeks because it’s about the vastness of the teenage emotional experience. I’ve tried to recapture the thrill and the hurting of that time,”Elena Carapetis said.

Photo of James Smith

 

STATE EXTRA

The Red Cross Letters

Devised by Verity Laughton

Directed by Andy Packer

Cast includes Matt Crook, Lizzy Falkland, Elizabeth Hay and Rory Walker

Designer: Geoff Cobham

Composer/musician: Matthew Gregan

Musical advisor: Quentin Grant

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

3 - 6 August, 2016

Based on recently released collections held at State Library of South Australia for the past 96 years, The Red Cross Letters is a verbatim theatre piece that incorporates material from letters (from over 8,000 recently digitised case files) sent to the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau during WW1 by Australians seeking news of their loved ones on the front, and the replies.

For playwright Verity Laughton, these private letters and official responses, written against the great drama and vast distances of the First World War were like transparencies of another time. Verity Laughton said, “For me, the most poignant element, apart from the sheer scale of loss and dislocation, was the innocence and simplicity of the requests by the relatives for information contrasted with the sheer horror that their loved ones were experiencing in Europe and the Middle East.”

The correspondence includes eye-witness accounts from military commanders, soldiers, medical staff and mates who fought alongside the lost or wounded.

Verity Laughton says it’s not all sadness: “There is humour – black and otherwise – and affirmation. But it’s another world where the King William Street in which one soldier’s family had a home was a very different place to the one we see today.”

Photo: Elizabeth Hay.

 

STATE UMBRELLA

Red Sky Morning

By Tom Holloway

Directed by Sarah Dunn

Starring Julie Wood

The Bakehouse Theatre

8 - 30 September

Red Sky Morning tells the story of a woman, a man and a girl over the course of a single day. The three voices from one family intertwine to tell a story of isolation in regional Australia. Moments missed, dreams not shared and the tragedy of the everyday course through this redemptive tale about the need to connect.

Director Sarah Dunn said, “Red Sky Morning effortlessly crawls under your skin and then stays there, gently, and whispers other people’s truths until you feel that they are part of you. I can’t wait to give that experience of the play to our audience.”

Photo: Julie Wood

 

www.statetheatrecompany.com.au

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