Main image: L-R Marina Prior who plays Kimberley and Casey Donovan who plays Aunt Deb in Kimberley Akimbo
State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2025 Season invites audiences to immerse themselves in a mix of bold new theatrical drama, comedy, musical theatre and reimagined classics led by both Australian entertainment icons and brilliant new talent.
The seven-show program, announced by outgoing Artistic Director Mitchell Butel on October 31, also includes a festival of new South Australian plays in Great Australian Bites.
From Emily Steel’s behind-the-scenes dive into Australian politics in Housework to the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Kimberley Akimbo to the beloved and legendary The Glass Menagerie, Season 2025 will be a rollercoaster ride of high-wire and high-quality work.
Butel says, “It’s a season that’s full of works about making a change and making a difference. It’s also the last season I will have had the pleasure and privilege of curating as Artistic Director of this glorious Company. I have loved my time with this Company and community over the past six years and I hope the shows we’ve been able to create and share in that time have changed you and left their mark.”
Butel marks the end of his 6-year tenure with strong and witty women across different centuries continuing the make change for the next generation. From Canberra’s corridors of power in Emily Steel’s dazzling world premiere black comedy Housework, starring the comic genius mischief makers, Susie Youssef and Emily Taheny, to their ancestors fighting for equal rights and power over language in a return season of the sold-out smash
The Dictionary of Lost Words adapted by Verity Laughton, from the novel by Pip Williams.
Later in the year, we will fall in love again with a young Italian-Australian transforming into the hero she’s
destined to be in the acclaimed stage adaptation of Melina Marchetta’s beloved book and film Looking For Alibrandi by Vidya Rajan. Then we introduce audiences to an idiosyncratic ice-skating teen being changed by the love of another and of herself starring stage icons Marina Prior, Casey Donovan, Christie Whelan Browne and Nathan O’Keefe in the Australian premiere of the hit musical Kimberley Akimbo with music by Jeanine Tesori (Shrek, Fun Home) and book by David Lindsay-Abaire (Ripcord), directed by Butel.
In Dear Son: Letters and Reflections From First Nations Fathers, based on the book by Thomas Mayo, adapted by Isaac Drandic (At What Cost?) and John Harvey and featuring Trevor Jamieson (Storm Boy, The Secret River) and Jimi Bani (Mabo, Every Brilliant Thing), you’ll hear from prominent First Nation Australian fathers (including Troy Cassar-Daley and Jack Latimore) who have nurtured their sons and our country’s culture.
In Great Australian Bites, you can devour some of the tasty new offerings by South Australian writers Piri Eddy, Anthony Nocera, Sarah Peters, Alex Vickery-Howe, Nicola Watson and Alexis West whose exciting new plays will help change the way we see the world and ourselves.
The curtain closes in 2025 with The Glass Menagerie, an American classic and one of Tennessee Williams’ most powerful and affecting plays starring South Australian stage legends, Ksenja Logos and Kathryn Adams.
So many great ideas, so many great artists, and so many great productions. 2025 will be a year of innovative, transcendent and moving entertainment.
Tickets on sale now at statetheatrecompany.com.au
