La Boite Theatre celebrates 100 years with a storied 2025 season
Turning 100 is no mean feat. In fact, it’s enough to make La Boite Australia’s longest, continuously running theatre company. Celebrating a century of colourful and creative escapades, La Boite is marking this auspicious milestone with a year of storytelling, special events, surprise guests and sojourns down memory lane. Age cannot wither, nor custom stale its infinite variety as La Boite announces its anticipated 2025 Season, a daring program of reimagined classics, cross-genre productions, powerful performances and striking cultural contributions. Read on to hear all the dramatic details …
Entering 2025 older and bolder, La Boite’s four major productions include a spirited adaptation of Macbeth, the world premiere of Dead Puppet Society’s We’re All Gonna Die! and Congratulations, Get Rich! (co-presented with Sydney Theatre Company and Singapore Repertory Theatre) and the Queensland premiere of the celebrated Griffin Theatre production, WhiteFella Yella Tree. Complementing the mainstage program is a three-month play-reading series called La Boite Encores which will bring to life ten celebrated hits and fan favourites from the company’s centenarian archives.
La Boite Theatre artistic director Courtney Stewart says it is a privilege to steer the company into its centennial year.
“The dual themes of legacy and longevity were front of mind even before I was appointed as La Boite’s artistic director, a position that has been filled over the past 100 years by luminaries and legends of Australian theatre,” she says. “I keep returning to a quote I read in Christine Comans’ book, La Boite: The Story of an Australian Theatre Company, which recounted the ethos on which the company was founded.
“It was about ‘presenting serious drama and aspiring to cultural awareness, social improvement, discussing moral and spiritual values and collective responsibility’ and it’s become a guiding light.
“It’s what La Boite’s founders were trying to do 100 years ago and it’s what we’re still striving to achieve – how do we set ourselves up for another century of legacy?”
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The next 100 years begin with a Shakespearean subversion – a retelling of the 400-year-old Macbeth where the three witches reclaim the narrative. The Weird Sisters step off their heath and into the spotlight in this hybrid production co-directed by Stewart and Lisa Fa’alafi.
Opening on International Women’s Day (March 8) and running until March 22, this brand-new Macbeth breathes at the intersection of spirituality, philosophy, power, ambition and fate.
From July 30 to August 16, We’re All Gonna Die! by Maddie Nixon takes to the stage. This high-octane, provocative production marks the return of Brisbane-based, globally renowned darlings Dead Puppet Society, who last collaborated with La Boite in the 2017 smash-hit, Laser Beak Man.
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Part climate change play, part schlock horror, part live comic book, We’re All Gonna Die! is a wholly enjoyable romp about monsters, real and metaphorical, featuring an Australian all-star cast including La Boite stalwarts Anthony Standish and Ngoc Phan.
Making its world premiere from September 4–20 is Congratulations, Get Rich! (恭喜发财,人日快乐), a major international collaboration created by Merlynn Tong and directed by Stewart.
An explosive ghost story set in a karaoke bar with a thematic playlist that spans transformation, legacy, family, hope, traditions, laugh-out-loud comedy and the ecstasy of being alive, the brand-new Asian-Australian work stars Tong alongside Singapore’s Seong Hui Xuan, Zachary Boulton and Kimie Tsukakoshi, who is returning to La Boite’s stage after her critically acclaimed performance in 2023’s The Poison of Polygamy. After making its debut in Brisbane, Congratulations, Get Rich! will tour Sydney and Singapore taking La Boite international for the first time.
La Boite’s final mainstage production for 2025 is sweeping 19th-century coming-of-age saga about love, mob and Country, WhiteFella Yella Tree. The heart-warming and heartbreaking queer love story was written by Dylan Van Den Berg and La Boite is proud to host its Queensland premiere season from October 23 to November 8.
It chronicles the fragile friendship that blossoms into love between Ty and Neddy, two First Nations teenagers poised on the brink of a world that is about to change forever.
Throughout the year The La Boite Encores series will dive into La Boite’s rich history of theatrical excellence, reuniting original cast members and directors along with emerging Brisbane talent in a captivating play-reading series of ten fan-favourites from the theatre’s storied archives. Featuring box office hits and ground-breaking productions, the series includes Margery Forde’s X-Stacy (May 12), Future D. Fidel’s Prize Fighter (23 June) and Michelle Law’s Single Asian Female (July 1), among other iconic plays, some of which are still to be revealed.
“I invite everyone to join us in our 100th year as we begin another century of changing the world, one story at a time,” says Stewart.
For more information about La Boite’s 100th year and its 2025 Season program head to the La Boite website.