From relatively recent works like Martin McDonagh’s caustic dramedy The Beauty Queen of Leenane to classics by Shakespeare and Noël Coward, the Australian Capital Theatre Hub’s (ACT Hub) 2025 season offers local audiences a diverse mix of 11 productions, including musical theatre, new adaptations and more.
The season also features a new initiative, the Hub Fest Play Festival, which will showcase three works in repertory throughout February. Each of the three works selected for the Festival will be staged on a rotating basis, with seven performances of each show in total between 8 and 23 February.
“Something that is always front of mind for me is Australian work, especially contemporary Australian work, and I have been toying with the concept of a festival of plays in repertory for a while. So when the opportunity to combine those two things at ACT Hub in 2025 arose, I took it and ran with it!” ACT Hub’s Lachlan Houen, who is directing the Hub Fest Play Festival, tells ArtsHub.
“The aim of the Hub Fest is to encourage artists of any calibre to pitch us a show they have wanted to do, but haven’t yet had the chance [to tackle], and bring it to life in our little indie theatre. These works can be existing texts, new pieces or even a series of scenes/monologues – the sky’s the limit. We really want to celebrate the playwriting talent we have in this country, and activate our space with a crop of artists we may not have engaged with yet – and we think this Festival is the perfect way to do that.
“While our primary focus will be on local Canberra artists, we welcome applications from any and all artists,” Houen says.
Applications to stage a work in the Hub Fest Play Festival are now open and close on Sunday 15 December. Submissions are encouraged from any and all interested parties, particularly emerging artists and those from diverse backgrounds. Visit the ACT Hub website for details.
The new Australian play Every Lovely Terrible Thing by Adam Fawcett, a “a striking exploration of trauma and grief and the challenges that come with staying together as a family when it becomes increasingly clear that healing is not possible when together,” and which premiered at Melbourne’s Theatre Works in March 2024, has also been programmed for next year.
“We read Every Lovely Terrible Thing as part of our Hub-Athon (12-hour play reading fundraising event) earlier this year, and I instantly fell in love. It is a contemporary queer Australian work that speaks to the essence of being human on so many levels – the relationships we build and break, the people we love and lose, and the person we become because, and in spite, of our environment. I feel so very privileged to be presenting this piece for only the second time after its premiere earlier this year at Theatre Works – it’s an absolute gem of a show,” Houen says.
2025 season highlights
English playwright Jez Butterworth’s Mojo, a black comedy set in Soho’s criminal underworld in the late 1950s, opens the 2025 season, marking a co-production between ACT Hub and Lachlan Herring’s recently launched Red Herring Theatre Company.
Mojo, which premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1995, was memorably described in a review of its 2013 revival as “a play about damaged people”.
The Guardian’s Michael Billington continued, “Far from being a celebration of cocksure masculinity, as some initially assumed, it is a criticism of it. Butterworth is writing about a patriarchal world in which men talk big in order to disguise their loneliness, panic and fear of emotional contact.”
Houen, who is directing the production, explains: “Working with a new company is always a treat, and I’m so fortunate to be directing Red Herring Theatre Company’s first show – a co-production with ACT Hub: Mojo by Jez Butterworth. A black comedy that runs at breakneck pace, Butterworth’s first play is a fascinating examination of masculinity within the context of 1950s Soho, London, with a group of gangsters who discover their boss sawn in half in two different bins… safe to say things spiral from there!”
Read: ArtsHub’s 2025 season guide to the performing arts
The season also includes a new adaptation of Lorca’s The House of Bernada Alba by Karen Vickery with Andrea Garcia, presented by resident company Chaika Theatre; Noël Coward’s comedy Present Laughter; Shakespeare’s Macbeth, produced by The Q and Lakespeare; as well as Chaika Theatre’s Julius Caesar.
Chaika Theatre’s Karen Vickery, who is directing The House of Bernarda Alba, says of the upcoming production: “I’m very excited to bring fresh eyes to Lorca’s masterpiece. I’ve wanted to do this play – described as the first play for an all-women cast – for a few years. With increasing policing of women’s bodies around the world, The House of Bernarda Alba feels especially timely.”
She adds that the company’s production of Julius Caesar, “will be Chaika’s first Shakespeare production. The dangers of being swayed by political rhetoric – of social division descending into civil war feel alarmingly prescient”.
The black comedy The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisheerin), a “bitter-humoured play of thwarted dreams” has also been programmed, presented by Free-Rain Theatre Company. There are plans also underway to present a second Irish play – a queer-themed two-hander set in County Clare – once the rights to stage the production have been secured.
The season also features a return season of Everyman Theatre’s The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!), which retells a simple story in five different ways, each riffing off the style of a musical theatre legend, and an encore season of Robert Askins’ blasphemous black comedy (with puppets), Hand to God.
Everyman Theatre’s Jarrad West says of remounting the two productions: “In our fourth year at the Hub we are thrilled to continue and develop our practice of being the queer theatre company in Canberra and also bring back some of our greatest hits for next year.”
Uniting a cluster of independent theatre companies under one roof at Kingston’s heritage-listed Causeway Hall, the ACT Hub was established in late 2021 following an extended period of community consultation.
Three companies are currently in residence at the ACT Hub: Everyman Theatre, Chaika Theatre and Free-Rain Theatre Company.
Season 2025 will also feature a range of events to be announced throughout the year, as well as the July Learning Program and the return of annual fundraising event The 12-Hour Hub-Athon.
Learn more about the ACT Hub’s 2025 season.
