Red Stitch unveils 2026 Season

Melbourne’s Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre has unveiled its 2026 season, marking the company’s 25th anniversary with a program that reflects its legacy of risk-taking, excellence and artist-led storytelling.

Anchored by a landmark revival of Ray Lawler’s The Doll Trilogy, the season also features acclaimed new international works, and a world premiere as part of Red Stitch’s INK program, which champions original Australian writing.

The announcement follows a year of critical and audience acclaim, most recently with the sell-out season of Max Friedlich’s Job. As it enters its 25th year, Red Stitch continues to play a vital role in commissioning, developing and producing new Australian work, and in bringing urgent, resonant voices to audiences across Melbourne.

Quote attributable to Red Stitch Artistic Director Ella Caldwell:

Our 25th anniversary season is a celebration of the core values that have shaped Red Stitch from the very beginning – the intimacy of our space, the strength of our ensemble, and a fierce belief in the power of great writing. As an ensemble company, our focus has always been on the relationship between actors and the playwright’s words on the page, and the audience travelling alongside us.

This program brings together extraordinary international voices, urgent new Australian work, and one of the most significant works in our national canon, The Doll Trilogy, realised as it was meant to be experienced by an ensemble of actors inhabiting the roles across three decades.

Ray Lawler was a trailblazer, a master of his craft and one of Australia’s most influential artists. While The Doll is widely recognised for its significant contribution to dramatic literature, the full trilogy is rarely staged due to its scale and complexity – but at Red Stitch, we love a challenge.

This season feels like the perfect moment to reflect on where we’ve come from, and to share work that speaks to who we are now, how we got here and who we might become.

Red Stitch’s 2026 season includes:

The Doll Trilogy (Kid Stakes, Other Times, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll) by Ray Lawler 21 February – 11 April

 

 

Performed in its entirety for the first time since 1985, Ray Lawler’s The Doll Trilogy charts the transformation of a nation. Best known for Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – lauded as a “watershed moment” for Australian theatre in 1955 – the trilogy depicts working-class Melbourne with warmth, humour and sensitivity.

From the playful romance of Kid Stakes in 1937, through the war-shadowed years of Other Times, to the shattering conclusion of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1953, Lawler’s characters embody idealism, disappointment and resilience against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world.

Directed by Red Stitch Artistic Director Ella Caldwell and performed by a single ensemble as Lawler intended, the production features an award-winning cast including Caroline Lee (The Newsready, Honour), Emily Goddard (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Clickbait), Khisraw Jones-Shukoor (The Comeuppance), alongside long-term members Ngaire Dawn-Fair (The Flick) and Ben Prendergast (Wolf Man, God of War), with Damian Walshe-Howling (A View from the Bridge) and Lucinda Smith (Honour).

Presented as the centrepiece for the theatre’s 25th anniversary, this ambitious staging is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness a cornerstone of Australian theatre in a truly intimate setting.

Anna X by Joseph Charlton: 27 May – 21 June

 

 

Dubbed “frenetic, fun and ultra-cool” (The Guardian) in its West End run, journalist-turned playwright Joseph Charlton’s Anna X is a razor-sharp satire inspired by the true story of socialite-con artist Anna
Delvey.

Anna and Ariel are determined to make their mark in New York’s glittering social scene no matter the cost – but behind the filters and facades lies a story about ambition, deception and the price of belonging in the age of social media. Directed by Sydney-based stage and screen director Tait de Lorenzo (international associate director on The Picture of Dorian Gray), Anna X hurtles through the neon chaos of ahyper-connected world, where wealth and influence are curated illusions and identity is constructed to survive.

Funeral Flowers by Emma Dennis Edwards 29 July – 23 August

 

 

Winner of the Scotsman Fringe First Award at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Emma Dennis-Edwards’ Funeral Flowers makes its Australian premiere.

The play follows seventeen-year-old Angelique, who dreams of becoming a florist — seeing flowers as her escape from school bullies, the foster care system, and the reality of her mother’s imprisonment. Inspired by the true story of Tottenham community leader Gina Moffatt, Funeral Flowers is a deeply human
coming-of-age monologue about resilience and hope.

Under the direction of the Co-Artistic Director of Black Honey Company Candy Bowers, Lucy Ansell (Super, Force of Nature: The Dry 2, Strife returns to Red Stitch to lead this unflinching portrait of survival and the beauty that can bloom in unexpected places.

Luke by Angus Cameron (INK Production) 16 September – 11 October

 

 

A world premiere developed through Red Stitch’s INK program comes Luke – a decades-spanning, form bending and proudly queer Australian story from Melbourne based playwright Angus Cameron.

Directed by Gary Abrahams (The Comeuppance, A Case for the Existence of God, Yentl), Luke unfolds over one pivotal night in 2007, where fresh out of high school Chris drinks, argues and philosophises with his two older teacher friends. When a buried secret begins to surface, the night takes an irreversible turn and lives are rewritten forever. Featuring Olga Makeeva (Stop. Rewind, Good People, Wittenberg) and Dion Mills (Conspiracy 365, Stingers, All My Love), this provocative and unflinching play is contemporary theatre at its boldest.

Carbon by Pier Lorenzo Pisano Translated by Atri Banerjee 11 November – 6 December

 

 

Naples-born filmmaker and playwright Pier Lorenzo Pisano’s Carbon arrives at Red Stitch for its Australian debut. When a non–carbon-based alien life form is witnessed in an undeniable first encounter, the world can no longer look away. Featuring Red Stitch ensemble members Caroline Lee and Harvey Zielinski (Deadloch, White Fever, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), the play unfolds in a stark interrogation room, between a witness and an investigator searching for reason amongst the unknown.

Winner of Italy’s most prestigious theatre prize, the Riccione Theatre Award, Carbon is a gripping and unsettling new work that examines the nature of humanity whenconfronted with an encounter beyond our understanding. Directed by Katy Maudlin.

On The Ropes by Dan Giovannoni

 

 

Presented in partnership with Peninsula Community Legal Centre, On the Ropes is Red Stitch’s dedicated education production for 2026, touring directly to Victorian schools. This new work by acclaimed playwright Dan Giovannoni (Merciless Gods, Jurassica) is a compassionate new play about two sixteen-year-olds whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a private photo goes public. Inside a lawyer’s office, their stories unfurl, tangled in questions of coercion, consent, and the fear of being defined by their worst mistake.

Featuring Karl Richmond (Together, Neighbours), Milana Markovic-Matovic (The Master And Margarita, Almost Maine, Fess Up) and multi-award-winning Australian actor Justin Hosking (All Her Fault, Snatchers, After Silence, Any Questions for Ben?) the play explores the grey areas between right and wrong, and how violence reverberates through young lives, both online and off. Directed by Krystalla Pearce (Prayer Machine, Vigilante) with sound design by Beau Livori, this co-production brings Red Stitch’s commitment to contemporary Australian voices into the classroom.

With more to be announced in 2026, Red Stitch celebrates a quarter century by cementing its place as the home of “consistently excellent theatre” (Joanna Murray-Smith). The ensemble-led company continues to punch above its weight, having delivered over 175 productions and multiple national tours, with 2026 set to be another ambitious undertaking.

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Photo Credit: Matto Lucas