A new play reading series revives 10 significant Australian plays from the archives of La Boite, Australia’s oldest continuously running professional theatre company.
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What is La Boite Encores?
La Boite Encores, running from 28 April to 1 July, features 10, one-night-only rehearsed readings of plays such as boy girl wall, Prize Fighter and Single Asian Female. Most of the works selected for the play-reading series of 10 plays over 10 weeks are strongly associated with La Boite – indeed, all but two of the plays had their world premieres at the theatre.
The series of play readings reunites many of the productions’ original cast members and directors, pairing them with emerging Brisbane talents and offering audiences a snapshot of La Boite’s 100 years of theatre-making.
Notably, four former La Boite Artistic Directors (ADs) – Sue Rider, Sean Mee, David Berthold and Todd MacDonald – are returning to direct four of the 10 works, adding to the celebration of the company’s legacy in its centenary year.
Describing the project in a media statement, AD and CEO Courtney Stewart said: “La Boite Encores is a celebration of our rich artistic history and a tribute to the trailblazing works that have shaped our company… Revisiting these remarkable productions allows us to honour the artists, creatives and communities who have contributed to La Boite’s 100-year legacy. La Boite Encores is about reconnecting with the past while forging the future.”
La Boite Theatre, originally known as Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society, was established in 1925, but changed its name to La Boite (from the French ‘the box’) in 1967.
Read: La Boite Theatre celebrates 100 years of Queensland stories in 2025
Since 2003, the company has been based at the Roundhouse Theatre at the Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Precinct in Kelvin Grove.
The full Encores program
Four of the plays were announced last year, as part of La Boite’s centenary season unveiling. They are:
- Future D Fidel’s “confronting and compelling … [and] highly kinetic” Prize Fighter from 2015, to be directed by Todd MacDonald (La Boite’s AD from 2015 to 2019) who directed the original production
- The “hilarious” and “remarkable” boy girl wall by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard (originally staged at Metro Arts in 2009 before being presented at La Boite twice in 2011; Ryan and Stibbard reunite to direct this one-off rehearsed reading of their cult classic)
- Michelle Law’s Single Asian Female (2017), the first mainstage Australian play written by an Asian-Australian woman about the Asian-Australian experience, to be directed by Claire Christian, who directed the original production. La Boite’s current AD and CEO, Courtney Stewart, played the character of Mei in Single Asian Female and will be reprising the role in this upcoming reading alongside most of the original cast, and
- Sue Rider’s The Matilda Women, first staged by La Boite in 1988 (and remounted in 1989 and 1993). Rider, who was La Boite’s AD from 1993 to 2000, wrote and directed The Matilda Women, which celebrates the stories of nine remarkable Australian women, including Gladys Moncrieff (Australia’s ‘Queen of Song’) and Lillian Cooper (Queensland’s first female doctor). Original cast members returning for the play reading include Rosemary Traynor (1988), Christen O’Leary (1988/89) and Barbara Lowing (1993).
The 10 plays were partially selected through consultation with former La Boite ADs – those who are still alive – with each asked to select plays that had had the greatest impact on the life and legacy of the theatre.
Current CEO/AD Courtney Stewart tells ArtsHub, “While the original idea included a play per decade, the final selection evolved in response to a range of artistic, logistical and cultural considerations. Rather than curating to simply tick off decades, we chose to prioritise works that held meaningful connections to La Boite’s legacy – whether through their creation, development or performance history within our walls.
“The list was shaped by suggestions from former Artistic Directors, but it was equally shaped by the values and artistic priorities of La Boite today.”
Stewart says the company’s intention was to “critically engage with the Australian theatre canon – acknowledging that many canonical works have historically excluded diverse voices”.
“We aimed to highlight plays that reflect La Boite’s enduring commitment to risk-taking, innovation and cultural relevance – works that are inseparable from La Boite’s identity and history,” says Stewart.
“This approach allowed us to surface lesser-known or under-recognised gems, as well as celebrate directors, artists, and writers whose work helped define La Boite’s evolution over time.”
The six newly announced Encores plays are:
In Beauty it is Finished (1931) by George Landen Dann, which focuses on a then-scandalous relationship between a white sex worker and an Aboriginal man. In Beauty it is Finished was originally directed by Barbara Sisley (Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society/La Boite’s co-founder) and was the cause of a moral panic at a time when relationships between Black and white Queenslanders – and indeed all Australians – were controlled and curtailed by law. Numerous letters were written to newspapers calling for the play to be banned, and sermons both for and against the production were delivered from Brisbane’s pulpits.
The 2025 rehearsed reading will feature an all First Nations cast (unlike its world premiere production and subsequent 1977 revival, which both featured actors in blackface) and is directed by Butchulla man, multidisciplinary artist, director and producer Aidan Rowlingson.
X-Stacy (1998), written by Margery Forde and directed by Fraser Corfield, who was the Associate Director on the play’s original season and went on to become the Artistic Director and CEO of Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) from February 2009 to February 2025. The play is described as “One of Australia’s seminal plays for young people” and “a raw and gripping exploration of teenage life, love and loss”.
Black Chicks Talking (2002), written and directed by Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman Leah Purcell AM, who co-directed the original production. Black Chicks Talking is billed as a “bold exploration of First Nations Australian women’s stories”; the play was one of 20 new Queensland works commissioned between 2001 and 2003 under the then AD Sean Mee.
Zig Zag Street (2004), adapted by Philip Dean from the book by Brisbane author Nick Earls and directed by Sean Mee (La Boite’s AD from 2000 to 2008) – the first play to ever be performed in the Roundhouse Theatre.
The Narcissist (2007), written by Stephen Carleton and directed by Playlab’s Ian Lawson, who was La Boite’s Associate Director between 2002 and 2008. Described as a “riotous and politically incorrect post-modern comedy of manners in a play about middle-class, middle-age sexual politics”, The Narcissist has been rewritten since its premiere season to reflect current times.
Holding the Man (2006, La Boite 2013), adapted by Tommy Murphy from the book by Timothy Conigrave and directed on Monday 16 June by David Berthold (La Boite’s AD from 2008 to 2014), who directed the world premiere season of the play during his previous tenure as AD of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre.
Read: Holding the Man: from page to stage to screen
Reflecting the canon or breaking free of its strictures?
ArtsHub asked Associate Professor Chris Mead, Head of Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and previously the Literary Director at Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) and Literary Manager at both Sydney Theatre Company and Belvoir, to respond to the list of 10 plays being mounted by La Boite for the Encores season.
When asked to consider how the plays selected for La Boite Encores reflect the amorphous and much contested Australian theatre canon, Mead’s response is thoughtful and considered.
“Should we look backwards to look forwards? Know the rules to break the rules? Tear up the grass to keep it green?” he says.
Read: Should we fire the theatrical canon?
“Any attempt at retrieving an archive is only ever a contingent reliquary, an imperfect collection of bones and ash, an irrational shadowplay of the flesh, of roaring and the rage of multiple generations grasping at the now.
“I love any attempt to gather conversation around the power of the voice and the potential of theatre to distil and disseminate, but it is also always already a record of the gaps and the missed steps, the neglect, repressions and exclusions, a mourning and a celebration, a gift and an albatross,” Mead continues.
“And, more specifically, can one city, and in this case one theatre in one city, stand in for the whole of Australia’s voice?
“It is significant, however, to consider the voices from the north, upsetting standard narratives that place Sydney and Melbourne at the centre of modern Australian theatre history,” says Mead, who is also a dramaturg, a practice he wrote about at length in his 2022 book, Wondrous Strange: Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays (Currency Press).
“Methodologically, should the list represent a play per decade? Should the list be greatest hits or warts and all?
“What this list does do is throw all the challenges, questions of representation, and arguments about quality, influence and persistence back at us, demanding that we engage, maybe even inspiring us to write plays in response to it, creating a virtuous circle of fervent creativity,” he concludes.
The play reading series La Boite Encores runs from Monday 28 April to Tuesday 1 July 2025. Visit La Boite’s website for dates and details.
