Barely nine months into the job, the British director leaves the Australian company in the lurch.

Less than nine months into the job, Jonathan Church has quit as the new Artistic Director of Australia’s premiere theatre company. The British director, who succeeded Andrew Upton at Sydney Theatre Company in January this year, cited “other interests” as his reason for standing down, while his sudden departure leaves the remaining programming for the 2017 season to be completed by the company’s in-house artistic team.

“It has been a great experience working with this wonderful company and getting to know its network of extraordinary artists over the past nine months,” Church said in a press statement. “I expect to maintain close contacts with Australian theatre makers over the coming years, although, regrettably, it has not proved viable for me to continue as STC’s Artistic Director while balancing my other interests as we had hoped. I wish the company and the whole team well for the future.”

Church has been a come and go AD in Sydney to date, juggling the role with his outgoing commitments at the UK’s Chichester Festival Theatre while supervising rehearsals for the Australian tour of his staging of the musical Singin’ In The Rain, currently playing in Melbourne. During this time he was also working on his inaugural season for STC, a programme that will now be announced in September by a company left without an artistic leader.

“Since September last year, Jonathan has led the development of an exciting season for 2017. Over these nine months, he has been balancing his time in Sydney with his ongoing commitments in the UK and elsewhere, and it has become apparent that the combined workload and travel will be unsustainable,” said STC Chairman Ian Narev. “We understood when we made the appointment in August last year that Jonathan was much in demand and we agreed that time would be made for him to remain engaged in other opportunities around the world through his company Jonathan Church Productions. But ultimately, both parties have decided that this arrangement won’t be in the best interests for either in the long term.”

Despite his lack of direct experience of the Australian arts scene, the British director received almost unanimously positive press following his appointment last August, much of it due to his reputation for sound management and audience building. It had been speculated that his track record for shows with A-list stars would continue the company’s success story for international transfers begun under the artistic leadership of his predecessors Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton. It had also been thought that he would bring musicals to Sydney, with a new Tim Minchin project rumoured to be on the cards.

Church, who last year declared he had been watching STC’s growth over the past 30 years, claimed to have had “a strong sense of the extraordinary talent that exists and the deep sense of commitment to the theatre and the arts in general that a wide range of companies have fostered in Australia.” In addition, he was looking forward to “working alongside Executive Director Patrick McIntyre look forward to leading the company through its next phase of development.” Only this month, in another press statement, he warned against “unpicking what is a vibrant, collaborative and successful sector,” in the wake of the news that 65 companies had lost Australia Council four-year funding.

With little real detail in the public domain to explain Church’s apparent volte-face, media will likely be left to speculate on the reasons behind his sudden and premature departure. In recent months there have been those who have expressed fears for a company whose artistic leader has more often than not been absent. Others may suggest that once he’d looked more closely at it, Church considered the Australian theatre scene insufficiently appetising, or that the recent doom and gloom with a Federal Government that is showing little enthusiasm for the arts may have turned him off the idea of a long-term future Down Under.

Meanwhile, less than a year on, STC has been left to go through the painful recruitment process all over again. The search for Church’s replacement will commence after the company’s season launch.