Belvoir St Theatre Announces 2027 Season Amidst Post-Fire Rebuilding Efforts

When Margaret Thanos read A Clockwork Orange for the first time last year, she was struck by the similarities between the dystopia of the novel and society today.

"I couldn't help but feel Burgess was not describing some horrific imagined future, but the world I and my female friends feel like we live in right now," the director says.

Written by English author Anthony Burgess in 1962, in the shadow of World War II, A Clockwork Orange follows teenager Alex, who, with his gang of "droogs", inflicts "ultraviolence" on other people living in their near-future society.

When Alex is caught and convicted of the murder of an elderly woman, he is subjected to an experimental rehabilitation program, designed to make him severely ill at the thought of violence.

A Clockwork Orange was made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick in 1971 and will be adapted into a new play by Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre in 2027.

"I do feel like it's getting worse actually — that we're seeing a regression into a culture that not only condones but rewards behaviour of this kind: misogyny, racism, right-wing extremism," Thanos says.

In her early 20s, Thanos worked in feminist activist spaces, including as an advocate for girls' equality non-profit Plan International, but found herself feeling despondent.

"I didn't really matter what we did inside of the feminist movement if we couldn't address the challenges inside of 'boys' club' culture," she says. "The internet was making the problem worse. It was encouraging us to stop thinking for ourselves."

That lack of thinking is something Thanos saw in Burgess's novel.

"[He] makes the central question about choice and free will and whether anyone is really choosing to be good," Thanos says.

Tom Wright, who Thanos approached to adapt A Clockwork Orange, was drawn to the story as a kind of fable.

"It's not a story of profound psychology," Wright says. "It's a story about a society and about how a society deals with its demons."

Wright was also excited by the chance to work with the made-up language Alex and his droogs speak to one another: the Russian-influenced "Nadsat".

"What leapt out was the quality of that spoken language and just how theatrically inventive it is," he says. "It's the language of an alienated class, but it also has a celebratory quality.

"Somehow Alex and his droogs have found a way to be almost more energetic and more exuberant than the society they belong to — they dress and speak more flamboyantly; their imaginative inner lives seem stronger than those of the people around them.

"[It's] almost as if their violent, antisocial behaviour is a legitimate response to an uncaring society."

Cross-generational collaboration

The collaboration between Thanos and Wright exemplifies the way Belvoir forges connections between artists of different generations and acts as a training ground for emerging theatre-makers.

"In theatre terms, Margaret and I are like two generations apart," Wright says. "That's a really useful collaboration."

It's a theme of the season, which also sees Belvoir's artistic director Eamon Flack assistant-directing the debut play from Kalkadoon writer-director Abbie-lee Lewis, Dirty Diamonds, about two Aboriginal women — played by Logie winner Lila McGuire (Goolagong) and Ruby Henaway — hitting the road to escape one of their exes.

Other young artists coming to the fore at Belvoir in 2027 are Ayah Tayeh and Mehhma Malhi, co-directors of Wish You Were Here, by Pulitzer Prize-winning Iranian American writer Sanaz Toossi (English); director Hannah Goodwin, and writer Grace Chapple, who are collaborating on The Landlord, Chapple's horror-comedy about intergenerational inequity, set in a pair of Sydney terrace houses.

"The only way a new generation can learn the sort of secret lore of [theatre] is for it to get passed on from one person to another," Flack says.

Arts community banding together

Belvoir's 2027 season is the company's first since its workshop and warehouse were destroyed by fire in June.

"We're through that initial stage of 'How the f*** do we keep going?', and we're now in the 'How do we rebuild?' stage," Flack says.

Thanks to the sheer willpower and efforts of Belvoir's production team — and the support of audiences through donations — The Jungle and the Sea and The Book of Everything opened as scheduled.

The former's sets had been destroyed in the fire and were re-created from scratch in just 10 days, while the latter's had already been lost after a previous tour and were painstakingly remade by both Belvoir staff and external contractors.

"We didn't have to miss an hour of [Jungle and the Sea] rehearsals because of the commitment and cunning and heart with which our production team just swung into action," Flack says.

The support of the arts community, including Sydney Theatre Company and Opera Australia offering space and equipment, is an example of how local companies are working together at a time when it is increasingly difficult to make theatre.

While the cost-of-living crisis is impacting audiences and artists alike, theatre companies are grappling with rising production costs, changing audience behaviours and a lack of funding.

"There's a vicious cycle going on," Flack says. "The material challenge of living the life of a theatre artist is excruciatingly difficult for so many people, and at the same time, so many companies are in such tight financial circumstances they're having to hire fewer artists."

So, companies are collaborating through co-productions and transfers, which not only extend the lives of shows, but keep artists, many of whom survive contract to contract, employed for longer periods.

Belvoir's 2027 season includes two co-productions, Stereophonic by David Adjmi, with Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) and Queensland Theatre Company, and Dirty Diamonds, with MTC and in association with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company in Perth.

It also includes two transfers, with Megan Wilding's Game. Set. Match. coming to Sydney from Melbourne's Malthouse, a decade after the Gamilaroi writer and actor first started to develop the play with Belvoir, and one-woman show The Lark, starring Noni Hazlehurst, opening after seasons in cities and regional centres around Australia.

"Sharing resources and giving shows future lives, letting them grow and become better and be seen by more communities across more parts of the country, that's the only strategy left."