Australian stories take centre stage in State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2027 season, with six new Australian works anchoring a program that spans ancient myth, gothic drama, and one of the country’s most enduring classics.
Artistic Director Petra Kalive announced the season at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Wednesday 30 September, revealing a lineup that includes two company commissions, two new works from award-winning artists, and two SPARK productions from local independent theatre makers.
“There were new international works and classics in our early conversations, but as the season took shape, we kept choosing the stories that spoke most profoundly to the world we’re living in now, and they turned out to be mostly written by Australians,” Kalive says. “That tells you something about the state of Australian writing, and I find it thrilling.”
The 2027 season
The season opens with An Iliad (29 January – 18 February, Dunstan Playhouse), Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s acclaimed adaptation of Homer’s epic. David Wenham stars as a world-weary poet recounting the Trojan War, accompanied by live music from Helen Svoboda. Directed by Damien Ryan, the production follows a sold-out season at Sydney Theatre Company.
In February, Margaret J Harvey returns to the stage for the first time in over a decade with The Dark Matter of Usulal (19 February – 6 March, Odeon Theatre). Grounded in the living cosmologies of Saibai Island, this intimate solo work uses performance, sound, movement and digital imagery to explore memory, spirit and ancestral knowledge.
More than 70 years after its premiere changed Australian theatre, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (16 April – 8 May, Dunstan Playhouse) returns under Kalive’s direction. The all-Adelaide cast includes Anna Lindner, Nathan Page, Allycia Angeles and Kate Cheel in Ray Lawler’s masterpiece about love, friendship and the passing of time.
World premieres fill the middle of the year. Evil Hour (9 – 24 July, Space Theatre), James Smith’s playwriting debut for the company, is an Australian gothic drama set in 1850s South Australia, inspired by local history and women who have been forgotten. In August, the company partners with Griffin Theatre for Snappy (6 – 28 August, Dunstan Playhouse), Michele Lee’s sharp reimagining of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Lee won the 2025 Griffin Theatre Award for the work.
The season culminates with The Bookbinder of Jericho (24 September – 16 October, Dunstan Playhouse), a world-first stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ bestselling novel. Adapted by Verity Laughton, who brought The Dictionary of Lost Words to two sell-out Adelaide seasons, this co-production with Sydney Theatre Company and Arts Centre Melbourne stars Melissa Kahraman, Ksenja Logos and new Adelaide talent Billie-Rose Russell.
SPARK program
The SPARK program returns to Adelaide College of the Arts with two South Australian plays. A Guide to Success in the Workplace (8 – 17 July) is Taylor Nobes’ horror musical about toxic workplace culture, while Squid (30 September – 9 October) sees Luke Wiltshire bring his autobiographical story of transitioning to the stage.
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