Welcome to an enquiry into what’s happening in contemporary theatre across the country, with companies and collaborators from Perth, Sydney and Palm Island.

Experience the shifts of perspective as artists tell stories informed by place; connect with the contested idea of what it is to be Australian; and explore creative forms emerging across the country.

In The Confidence Man (Side Pony Productions) audience members perform for one other, under strict instruction. PROMPTER (Hydra Poesis) invites five onstage performers and five online performers from around the world to participate in a meditation on mediation. Nothing escapes the eye in Whelping Box (Branch Nebula, Matt Prest and Clare Britton), where spectators become complicit in a display of aggression, encircling the performers inside a 9 x 9 metre wooden box. Beautiful One Day (ILBIJERRI, Belvoir and version 1.0) and I’m Your Man (Roslyn Oades) are verbatim works pieced together entirely from interviews, foregrounding the realness and honouring the actual. And we’re delighted to co-present with Melbourne Festival A Small Prometheus, the re-imagination of an eternal story of fire from choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer/designer Robin Fox. Last but not least, an iconic Melbourne true-crime story is told in its place of origin, in a rare and special performance of The Hanging of Jean Lee (Andrée Greenwell).

Urgent stories, debated histories and ancient myths require new forms to tell them – the wrestling of meaning into and out of the work is the imaginative risk that we all participate in.

This is culture. This is art.

Here you are.