Out of hibernation, State Theatre Company’s 2021 season awakens
Real world crises both global and personal are reflected on stage in State Theatre Company’s 2021 season.
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Mitchell Butel had just delivered the first show of his first season as artistic director of State Theatre Company when the whole world changed.
COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the next five shows in his program – but fortunately, Butel has been able to reschedule three of them among the company’s offerings for 2021.
While he was not attempting to select works with a theme, Butel says certain commonalities have emerged.
“To ‘rethink’ is kind of what’s behind everything next year,” the actor turned director says.
Central to this is Hibernation, a work that Adelaide playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer had pitched to Butel well before there was any hint of a global pandemic.
“It’s turned out to be this incredibly prescient idea about how we look at the world and think about our lives, the climate, the planet,” Butel says.
In the play, a female scientist comes up with an idea to get the entire planet’s human population to agree to being put to sleep for a year, to see what effect that has on the regeneration of nature.
Butel, who will also direct the piece at the Dunstan Playhouse in August, says Hibernation was originally conceived as a new way to look at the issue and effects of climate change.
“Some of it is set in Adelaide, some in America, some in South America, some in Africa, some in Korea … it’s phenomenal,” Butel says.
“It felt very urgent to do the play, particularly with COVID. It was called Hibernation before it became a Zeitgeist term as well.
“If theatre is not addressing the concerns of the world at the moment, then what are we doing?”
Former State Theatre artistic director Rosalba Clemente – who was Butel’s first acting teacher – will return to direct the similarly themed Eureka Day at the Playhouse in November.
The play by US writer Jonathan Spector was also chosen before COVID but Butel says it looks at “vaccination, pandemics, cancel culture – all set within a school where a kid gets the mumps”.
Fortunately, State Theatre had secured Eureka Day for Adelaide just before the worldwide rights were snapped up by West End and Broadway producer Sonia Friedman.
“It’s a dynamite play, very funny but also very compassionate,” Butel says.
Among the three works reprogrammed from this year will be Adelaide playwright Emily Steel’s work Euphoria at the Space Theatre from May 6-15.
“I’m calling it an Antipodean Under Milkwood,” Butel says.
Euphoria features two virtuosic actors – Ashton Malcolm and James Smith – as a range of idiosyncratic characters full of love, pain, complexity and humour in a South Australian regional town. Commissioned by Country Arts SA, the play was informed by real conversations between Steel and people who live in those communities.
Also returning are comic actor Jonathan Biggins’ one-man show about former prime minister Paul Keating, The Gospel According To Paul, at the Playhouse from April 19 to May 1, and Elaine Crombie in the 25th anniversary version of landmark Indigenous work The 7 Stages of Grieving at the Space from July 28 to August 7.
The season will open with a co-production with Slingsby called The Boy Who Talked To Dogs as part of the Adelaide Festival. Adapted for the stage by Amy Conroy from the book by Martin McKenna, it tells the story of how the author ran away from his home in Limerick, Ireland, at 13 and found himself taken in by a new family – a pack of stray dogs. It will be staged in the Thomas Edmonds Opera Studio at Adelaide Showground from February 25 to March 14.
“It’s very immersive, using (Slingsby) director Andy Packer’s predilection for shadow puppetry with kind of cabaret seating,” Butel says.
The company will also return to the Royalty Theatre for The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race from June 4-19. Written by Melanie Tait, it is based on a true story from her home town of Robertson in NSW’s Southern Highlands, where the women received less prize money than their male counterparts at the local event.
“The play is based on that experience – they had a Go Fund Me campaign, and it became the biggest s...fight that Robertson’s ever seen,” Butel says.
“It’s this real powder keg of political correctness, feminism in a regional context, and empowerism. Ultimately, you find within the community that the people you thought were your enemies become your allies.”
As its classic work for the season, State Theatre will look at Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf “through a new lens” at the Playhouse from September 24 to October 9.
“We’ve got approval from the (playwright) Edward Albee estate to cast First Nations actors in it,” Butel says.
“Margaret Harvey, who is a Torres Strait Islander, is directing it; she was an actress for many years at Belvoir. We’re not going to change any of it – the text remains as it is – but Margaret was really interested in what it would mean to have this middle-class academic (George) being played by a First Nations person,” Butel says.
“Is that appropriate, what does it make us question about the western canon? Also, you’ve got this incredibly dysfunctional relationship at the centre of the show, in the same way that perhaps black and white Australia’s marriage is quite dysfunctional.
“It’s the mother lode of the difficult conversation plays.”
Full 2021 season details and bookings at statetheatrecompany.com.au