Season Preview 2020

In shaping a season, Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director Brett Sheehy looks first and foremost for plays that will feel relevant to today’s audience – and with the company’s Next Stage Writer’s Program, now in its third year, bearing fruit, he is confident that the 2020 program is full of themes that will strike home.


MTC Artistic Director Brett Sheehy with Executive Director Virginia Lovett. Photograph supplied

“Everything we put on stage should be relevant to our audiences’ lives in what will be the third decade of the 21st century, so [I’ve looked for] plays that draw on contemporary themes and events happening in the world around us, that [help us] understand them with a bit more clarity and humanity. So, if there’s anything in the program, if there’s because there’s something in it that I thought is relevant to our lives now,” says Sheehy.

Half of next year’s season is Australian, with four new commissions from Next Stage, a new play about Evonne Goolagong for which the Sumner Theatre will be turned into a tennis court, and a...