Black Swan Season 2023

Black Swan State Theatre Company has announced Artistic Director Kate Champion’s inaugural Season for 2023, celebrating a new artistic era for Western Australia’s state theatre company. 

The 2023 Season reflects Kate’s search for ‘stimulating and arresting ways to tell compelling stories, which grip the imagination in ways that excite and provoke.’ 

Returning to the State Theatre Centre, this season will showcase works from classic to contemporary, independent to mainstage, interstate to WA, and a world premiere of a new Australian work. Each play has been written and created by Australian artists at the peak of their powers and infused with Western Australian talent in a range of theatrical experiences.

In announcing the program, Kate Champion paid homage to Black Swan’s history saying, “It is full of bold theatrical endeavours and unique Western Australian perspectives. I am proud to have the opportunity to build on this history - a history like no other and an inspiration to all who follow.”

Photographer: Brett Walker

Season 2023 continues the relationship with Perth Festival in presenting the recent Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Cyrano by Virginia Gay, directed by Sarah Goodes. Freely adapting and reimagining Edmond Rostand’s classic play/ Gay who also takes on the title role, gives us a delightfully self-aware, razor-sharp theatrical rom-com. Her fresh take on the classic has been described as ‘daring, clever and funny’ and runs from 17 February to 5 March in the Heath Ledger Theatre. 

In its third year of Black Swan’s partnership with The Blue Room Theatre comes the murder ballad The Bleeding Tree by Angus Cerini, with direction from former Associate and Resident Artist Ian Michael. A cast of three First Nation women will take this poetic, gothic and intensely compelling tale to new levels of darkness and humour. Winner of four Performing Arts WA Awards (2022) and six Blue Room Theatre Awards (2021), this production will be upscaled to the Studio Underground from 29 April to 14 May. 

Black Swan welcomes home to WA acclaimed writer Andrew Bovell (When the Rain Stops Falling, Lantana) as he exposes a tumultuous year in the life of the Price family with Things I Know To Be True. Funny, touching, and relatable, this play delves deep into the heart of household dynamics and how we react to change. Directed by Kate Champion with a local cast in the Heath Ledger Theatre, the season runs from 27 May to 18 June.

Black Swan presents internationally celebrated dance theatre company Marrugeku’s Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Yawuru: Straight Talk]. This new dance, sound and installation work interrogates our capacity to lock away and isolate that which we fear. Jurrungu Ngan-ga explores Indigenous and refugee stories of humiliation and torture in prisons and detention centres, and simultaneously considers the power of their joy and ‘hope’.  Only eight performances in the Heath Ledger Theatre from 15 to 23 September.

From the creative minds of the multi-award winning McElhinney sisters, Mandy (The Glass Menagerie, Wakefield) and Hayley (Mystery Road: Origins, Oil) conjure up a new Australian work brimming with humour, beauty and sadness. Dirty Birds was conceived after twenty years of dreaming and reflects the sister’s own Irish heritage. This world premiere, directed by Kate Champion, is an exploration into their characters’ darkest secrets. Dirty Birds blurs the lines between truth and fiction, journeying through the past and present, the real and absurd. The season runs 18 November to 10 December in the Heath Ledger Theatre.

 

 

Member packages are now available, with single tickets on sale from Thursday 24 November. Visit blackswantheatre.com.au/memberships or phone (08) 6212 9300.

Images by Frances Andrijich unless otherwise stated.