Sydney Theatre Company unveils new artistic director, and you’ll know his voice

A long-time voice of the Play School theme song, an untrained actor who learnt his craft on the job, has been named the next artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Mitchell Butel of the State Theatre Company of South Australia succeeds Kip Williams to lead the flagship company following a national and global search.

Mitchell Butel replaces Kip Williams as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company. Credit: Wolter Peeters

The multi-award winning actor and director of theatre and stage musicals was selected to replace Williams because of his versatility, his refined curatorial eye, work ethic and understanding of what audiences want.

“I’ve worked with directors who work from a different viewpoint where it’s about control, force and about brutality,” he said. “But I think the best results come when you create a space that empowers people to do their best work.

“Claudia Karvan, when we did The Goat together, called me the smiling assassin. She said, ‘you get what you want but you do it with positivity, encouragement and repetition’. So I hope that’s the kind of director I am.”

Williams bows out in October after 13 years and 89 productions, bound for London’s West End and Broadway following the runaway international success of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The handover comes as STC continues to wrestle with major financial challenges including a cost of living crisis, changed buying patterns and the aftermath of a consumer and donor boycott over an on-stage pro-Palestinian protest by actors during the curtain call of The Seagull.

Despite major box office hits, STC posted a $15.3 million operational deficit in 2023 which fell to $1.8 million after government grants and donations were considered.

Returning the company to a place of financial surplus was “absolutely critical”, Butel said. Musical theatre had a place in STC’s program: “I don’t think popular and serious are mutually exclusive. Some people come to be educated and provoked, some people come to be delighted and to party.”

As for on-stage protests, Butel said the STC had made clear that it did not support individual political statements at curtain call.

He believed the more appropriate role for theatre was to stage seasons and works that reflected the state of the world and crises of our times.

Actors Mabel Li, Megan Wilding and Harry Greenwood wear keffiyehs for the curtain call of opening night of The Seagull in November.Credit: Andrew Burke

“I don’t think there’s any member of our community who has not been saddened by the loss of innocent lives that’s happened,” Butel said.

“At the end of the day, the organisation’s title is the Sydney Theatre Company. We make theatre collectively. We make theatre collaboratively. Therefore, what we put on stage needs to be a collaborative decision, and the way we communicate to our audience is through the medium of theatre. It’s important that a work speak for itself.”

Over a three-decade career, Butel has performed in or directed more than 150 stage productions and worked with every Australian state theatre company. No art form eludes his lengthy CV, be it theatre, opera, live music, musicals, film, television or cabaret.

His trophy cabinet boasts four Helpmanns, four Sydney Theatre and two Green Room awards.

At the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Butel last year had a major hand in three highest-selling Australian theatre shows – Edward Albee’s The Goat, Or Who is Sylvia?, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, which he also directed for the Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir Street Theatre. He commissioned sell-out stage adaption, The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Butel caught the acting bug while studying law at the University of NSW.

“From the first STC play I saw as a teenager – Michael Gow’s Away directed by Richard Wherrett – I took away incredible lessons about love, empathy and the way I wanted to live my life.”

He debuted on the STC stage in 1992 as an actor in Wayne Harrison’s Six Degrees of Separation. “I often say that watching Jacki Weaver and co was my acting school,” he said. “I didn’t go to a drama school. I learned on the stage floor.”

Butel was the voice of the Play School theme before Justine Clarke and performed as a mechanic in a Wiggles video.

He has since performed alongside other Australian acting royalty: Cate Blanchett, David Wenham, Richard Roxburgh in Rake, Toni Collette and Rose Byrne.

“My ultimate hope,” he said, “is that I can create platforms for artists in a way that has been created for me by all the artistic directors I’ve worked for.”