Winner of the Green Room Award for Best Independent Production in 2021, Kitan Petkovski’s acclaimed production returns as part of the 2023 Midsumma Festival. Join Queen Jesus (Kristen Smyth) for a revolutionary queer ritual in which bread is shared, wine is drunk, and familiar stories are reimagined by a transgender Jesus.
In this Melbourne exclusive, revolutionary trans icon Jo Clifford hosts a deeply personal introduction to her ground-breaking play, 'The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven'.
A new Australian play by Emmanuelle Mattana, 'Trophy Boys' is a queer black comedy and drag extravaganza about power, privilege, and high school debating. Directed by Marni Mount and presented as part of the 2023 Midsumma Festival.
Director Cassandra Fumi re-teams with the Green Room Award-winning design team behind 'The Mermaid' at La Mama – Set and Costume Designer Dann Barber and Lighting Designer Rachel Burke – to bring Tom Basden's adaptation of Dostoevsky's 'The Crocodile' to life. A play about art, animals, and what happens when you try to take on the system from within… a crocodile.
Acclaimed and award-winning pianist Coady Green has once again pulled together an outstanding group of musicians and ensembles for a two-week music series featuring ten performances with highly varied programs.
The Melbourne premiere of Adelaide playwright Duncan Graham's acclaimed psychological thriller about a stalked flight attendant, performed by Christina McLachlan and directed by Laurence Strangio ('L'amante anglaise' and 'Krapp's Last Tape').
Actors Mark Diaco and Justin Hosking – co-founders of HSTheatre ('The Long Red Road' at fortyfivedownstairs) – will alternate the roles of brothers Austin and Lee in a new production of Sam Shepard’s modern masterpiece about the double nature of sibling rivalry.
Join this family of storytellers - Uncle Larry Walsh, Victoria Morphy, Hannah Morphy-Walsh, and Isobel Morphy-Walsh - and their special guests as they weave creation, song, story, and movement together. Presented as part of the 2023 Yirramboi Festival.
Paul Capsis, the inimitable and incomparable icon of cabaret, returns to fortyfivedownstairs for the Melbourne premiere of 'Dry My Tears', following an acclaimed run in Sydney. Accompanied by The Song Company's Francis Greep, Capsis will perform an acoustic set that includes music by Kurt Weill, Elton John, and Johnny Mercer.
Presented by Fever103 theatre and directed by Monique Marani, this new Australian play about a young Cambridge student’s discovery of the Night Climbers (a secret society that gathers on the rooftops) is a powerful and poignant exploration of the barriers women face in traditionally male institutions, and the strength it takes to dismantle them.
Bloomsday in Melbourne's annual celebration of James Joyce continues with the Victorian premiere of his only play, exploring questions key to his masterpiece Ulysses (1922). If love is constrained by conventional bonds of fidelity, is it love at all?
Director Beng Oh and writer Jane Miller continue their acclaimed collaboration ('True Love Travels on a Gravel Road' and 'Cuckoo' at fortyfivedownstairs) with an adaptation of Medea for our times.
Following the success of 'Punk Rock' at fortyfivedownstairs in 2019, Patalog Theatre returns with a new production of iconic playwright Caryl Churchill’s masterwork 'Far Away', directed by Cassandra Fumi, and featuring Lucy Ansell and Darcy Kent.
A double bill of Benjamin Nichol’s acclaimed plays - the multi-Green Room award-winning 'Kerosene', directed by Nichol and performed/co-directed by Izabella Yena, and the acclaimed 2022 Melbourne Fringe hit SIRENS, directed by Liv Satchell, co-created by Izabella Yena, and performed by Nichol.
Following the success of 'King Lear' at fortyfivedownstairs in 2021, Melbourne Shakespeare Company returns with the Bard’s political thriller 'Julius Caesar', directed by Richard Murphett and featuring Robert Menzies in the title role.
Alice Bishop directs the premiere of this new play by Bridgette Burton ('Rhonda is in Therapy'), the tragi-comic story of Myra Foreman, a woman who missed her life on earth and is now going to live it, in space.
Bloomshed ('Paradise Lost' presented by Darebin Speakeasy) go up against a sub-elite AFL team in an all-out Battle Royale for the heart of an aging southern belle. Think dodgeball meets Tennessee Williams in this bold creation from one of Melbourne’s most exciting new companies.
The world premiere of a bold new folk musical adaptation of Virginia Woolf's seminal novel 'Orlando', a whirlwind tale of romance and betrayal in which a young poet changes gender and lives for over 200 years. Maude Davey ('Retro Futurismus' and 'Alter Edith' at fortyfivedownstairs) directs four actor-singer-musicians in the title role.