18.09.25
Dear Grif-friend,
It’s launch season—a.k.a. Theatre Christmas! That time of year when all Sydney’s theatre companies reveal what they have planned for the year ahead. And Griffin joined the chorus, launching our 2026 Season in conjunction with our mates at Belvoir St Theatre.
With the Stables under redevelopment, we’re in our second year away from home. If 2025 was about scale, then 2026 is about returning to Griffin’s roots: closeness, connection… and above all, intimacy. So, I’m thrilled to announce that we’ll be spending 2026 in residence at Sydney’s other small-but-mighty incubator of great Australian plays… Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre!
We open the year with a revival of steve j. spears’ The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin—a legendary one-man story about secrets, desire and repression, starring Simon Burke in its 50th anniversary revival.
Back by demand after a sell-out 2025 run, SISTREN by Iolanthe with Janet Anderson is a blazing playwriting debut about the power of sisterhood and claiming joy in a world that doesn’t understand you.
Playwright Happy Feraren makes her mainstage debut with SAVIOR, a biting satire on disaster relief and foreign aid—think Utopia meets The White Lotus.
Then, Zahra Newman delivers a tour-de-force solo in Wake in Fright at Belvoir Upstairs Theatre, co-adapted by myself and Zahra from Kenneth Cook’s cult Australian novel and later film—it is a story that has so much to say about Australia, about Australian-ness, that age-old question of who belongs and who doesn’t.
We close with Mum Club by Jorjia Gillis, starring Miranda Tapsell and Elaine Crombie and directed by Shari Sebbens—a raucous comedy about Blak motherhood, community and oat matcha lattes in the Inner West.
And alongside the Main Season, our Griffin Lookout plays are Afterglow by Sheanna Parker Russon & Lillian M. Hearne—a trans rom-com set in the world of barbershop quartets (!)—and lacuna by Eric Jiang, a surreal tale of family, memory and meddling with gods.
So, that’s Griffin in 2026! if 2025 was about scale—big shows, big
rooms, big canvases—then 2026 will be the opposite. Griffin in 2026: bold voices, daring stories, intimacy. Theatre that gets under your skin.
See you at Belvoir’s foyer!
Declan
Declan Greene
Artistic Director
