Seymour Centre Celebrates 50 Years With 2025 Season

Image: Cowbois, photo by Pollyanna Nowicki

Sydney’s Seymour Centre’s 50th year begins with the launch of the annual Seymour Season, a set of five events including three international plays and two locally produced works, presented in partnership with independent Australian theatre companies.

Seymour Centre’s Artistic Director, Timothy Jones said, “Since inception, part of our  mission has been to proudly support independent artists and companies to create and present outstanding performances at Seymour: One Extra Dance Company, Theatre Hydra, Carnivale, Musica Viva, Nimrod Theatre, SIMA Jazz and, more recently, Squabbalogic and Sport For Jove have all called Seymour Centre their home.

“Seymour’s curated performance season provides the foundations that allows major work to flourish. We support independent companies like no other, providing a free venue, technical and marketing expertise to allow artists to get on with the business of making art… art that both reflects our world and rocks it. And in Season 2025, following on from the success of our 2024 season (Trophy Boys, The Inheritance among others) this is exactly what we will deliver: the best independent performance companies, creating ambitious theatre works of scale that wrestle with contemporary issues, challenge expectations and provide an unmissable theatre experience. These are stories of now”.

Image: K Holmes. The Farm. Glass Child

Opening the year in April, Queensland-based contemporary dance company, The Farm, presents the Sydney premiere of Kayah and Maitreyah Guenther’s Glass Child. An “incredibly moving…deeply personal” work (Stage Whispers), Glass Child is a poignantly revealing depiction of the sibling relationship between Kayah, a young man with Down syndrome, and his sister Maitreyah expressed through dance, theatre and storytelling.

Image: Eureka Day

In May, Outhouse Theatre Co returns with the Sydney premiere of the New York Times Critic’s Pick Eureka Day by American playwright Jonathan Spector.  A hit on Broadway and in the West End, Eureka Day has been hailed as the “perfect play for our age of disagreement” (New York Times). Ideological warfare is declared at a cosy, progressive prep school when a mumps outbreak triggers a parental mutiny. Widely topical and screamingly funny, this razor-sharp satire will have you wincing and laughing in equal measure.

In August, Omusubi Productions brings one of “the greatest play[s] of Japan’s postwar era” (Saiichi Maruya) Hisashi Inoue’s The Face of Jizo to the Seymour Centre following its sold-out, critically acclaimed Australian premiere season at the Old Fitz Theatre in November 2023. This acclaimed Japanese play, which centres on a father and daughter in the aftermath of war, is a tale of courage, first love, spirited fathers, and learning to embrace the ghosts of the past. Image: The Face of Jizo. Photographer: Phil Erbacher.

After a successful first outing in 2024, the Clockfire Theatre Company presents the full-length premiere of RUINS أطلال by Emily Ayoub and Madeline Baghurst in September. RUINS أطلال harnesses the magic of visual storytelling and draws on themes of sacrifice, migration and homeland to explore the question: What is our heart’s journey when our world is split in two?

Image: RUINS أطلال 

Rounding out the season in November, Seymour welcomes Siren Theatre Co to present the Australian premiere of Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois directed by Kate Gaul. Originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Cowbois was described by Time Out UK as “joyously subversive”, and is a rollicking queer Western. In a sleepy town in the Wild West, the women drift through their days like tumbleweed. Their husbands, swept up in the gold rush, have been missing for almost a year and show no sign of returning. That is until handsome bandit Jack Cannon swaggers up to the town’s saloon. Nominated for Best New Play and Best Costume Design at the 2024 WhatsOnStage Awards, Cowbois is the perfect ending to Seymour’s 2025 season.  

As part of Seymour’s 50^th anniversary celebration, the launch kicks off with a special early bird ticket offer of $50 for all full priced tickets*. Early bird tickets are strictly limited and available until 28 February unless sold out prior. Seymour Centre’s 2025 season shows are also available in a variety of multipacks, on sale now at https://www.seymourcentre.com/

*Terms and conditions apply, please visit website for more information.

2025 SEYMOUR SEASON