RETROGRADE
MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY
In this gripping Australian premiere, Bert LaBonté (Topdog/Underdog) directs a taut dramatisation of a young Sidney Poitier’s career-defining encounter with Hollywood powerbrokers, starring Donné Ngabo (Last Days) and Alan Dale (Lost).
Written by Ryan Calais Cameron Retrograde is a witty interrogation of identity, power and integrity conjures a real encounter from Poitier’s past, ten years before he would become the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar. Retrograde exposes the racial fault lines beneath Hollywood’s glossy facade and the choices faced by those who dared to cross them.
FAIRFAX STUDIO | ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE | MAY 2026
TO SEE THE STARS AGAIN
CIRCA
Revoir les étoiles / To See the Stars Again is a major new creation from Circa that asks what it means to believe in hope without being naive about darkness. Staged on a field of hundreds of lightbulbs; a landscape that becomes both constellation and terrain – twelve acrobats and four live musicians traverse an ascent from witnessing through transformation to transcendence. The title comes from the final line of Dante’s Inferno: after the darkest depths, the poet emerges to glimpse the stars once more. In fact, all three books of Dante’s Divine Comedy end with the word “stelle” (stars). It is one of literature’s great unifying gestures, and here it becomes the structural spine of the creation.
Created by Yaron Lifschitz with Circa Ensemble.
Composer and musical director: Jethro Woodward with, Xani Kolac, Natasha Fearnside & Tilman Robinson
Lyon, Nuits de Fourvière | Paris, Grand Palais | Montpellier, Printemps des Comédiens
NIGHT VISIONS
ILLUMINATE ADELAIDE
Slip through the veil of Adelaide Botanic Garden to enter a mesmerising portal to parallel world. Fuelled by cutting-edge light, lasers, projections and sound, journey along an extraordinary path where the latest in immersive technology reimagines the beauty of nature into sensory realms of colour and sound.
Featured Artists: Chris Petridis, Robin Fox, Craig Walsh, Amelia Kosminsky, Paul Lim, Jayden Sutherland & Elisha Umuhuri
Invenio Singers: Gian Slater, Clancye Milne, Louisa Rankin and Josh Kyle
Adelaide Botanic Garden | July - 19 2026
BREAK OF DAY
MALTHOUSE THEATRE
Out on the edge of a satellite city, is Burra Creek, home to the world’s largest online retail warehouse, and tonight Pam (Kat Stewart) is working the nightshift, while her daughter Rae, back home, is also pulling an all-nighter, for very different reasons.
Premiering at Malthouse Theatre after winning the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award and The Australian Writers Guild Prize for Playwriting, Steve Rodgers’ Break of Day also sees Sarah Goodes and Kat Stewart collaborate again after the success of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Red Stitch, Comedy Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company). This is a story that asks how far determination can go to change the course
MALTHOUSE THEATRE | AUGUST 2026