Griffin Theatre Company’s (Sydney) 2023 season will be the final staged in the current SBW Stables Theatre, before it undergoes major expansive renovation works in late 2023/early 2024.
The 2023 season features three world premieres – including the latest work from award-winning playwright and Griffin favourite Suzie Miller – and one Sydney premiere. Griffin says goodbye to its cosy, historic home with a bang.
Starting off the year is ‘Sex Magick’ by Nicholas Brown. It’s a wildly funny exploration of queerness, masculinity, and South Asian-Australian identity. Ard Panicker’s world is thrown into turmoil when he receives word that his estranged father has died. A trip to South India for answers to a mysterious medical condition finds Ard meeting with an enlightened tantric guru who cracks open his sense of identity and sexuality, as well as his grip on reality.
‘Pony’ by Eloise Snape presents Hazel. She’s no angel. . . She’s pregnant but she’s also very good at ignoring the stark reality about to rock her world. ‘Pony’ is the sassy, crass, one-woman crusade desperately searching for the light at the end of the (vaginal) tunnel.
Suzie Miller’s ‘Jailbaby’ is an interrogation of Australia’s legal system. AJ wasn’t meant to go to prison, but once he’s convicted of theft, he’s placed behind the walls of an institution where his own body is stolen from him. It’s an eye opening look at the darkest corners of society, asking its audience to pinpoint the exact moment when it all goes wrong.
‘Blaque Showgirls’ is Nakkiah Lui’s sparkly, smart-assed spoof of ‘Showgirls’ – where fair-skinned Sarah Jane Jones is sure of two things. One, she’s the best dancer in the whole town of Chithole, and two, she’s a proud Aboriginal woman. But there’s very little proof either of these things. So when Sarah is offered some hope about her Indigenous ancestry, Sarah heads to Brisbane with a mission of landing a role in the First Nations burlesque spectacular ‘Blaque Showgirls’.
Alongside the main Griffin season s the artist development programme Griffin Lookout, with two shows: ‘UFO’ by re:group performance collective and ‘Gadigal Gal’ by Graham Simms, aka Nana Miss Kouri.
“When I used to come to Griffin as an audience member, one of the things I loved was entering the SBW Stables Theatre, looking around and realising I was going to be taken to a completely different world by a writer,” Artistic Director Declan Greene says.
“And this is the sentiment with which we've programmed our 2023 season. Griffin’s 2023 season is full of works that will transport audiences to places beyond the realm of the everyday—in a messy, expansive, joyously chaotic embrace.”
Griffin Theatre Company’s 2023 season begins with ‘Sex Magick’ from 17 February.
