Sydney Theatre Company has revealed its 2026 season, the first under Artistic Director Mitchell Butel, and it’s a bold line-up that gives Aussie stories and performers centre stage. Across 13 productions, the program offers three world premieres, the Australian premiere of one of Broadway’s most awarded new plays and a mix of acclaimed local and international works.
The season opens with Whispering Jack: The John Farnham Musical, Jack Yabsley’s take on the 1986 album that transformed Farnham’s career and Australian pop music, directed by Butel himself.
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Jane Harrison’s Bennelong in London, directed by Ian Michael, explores the extraordinary journey of the Eora man taken to Britain and back. Suzie Miller’s Strong is the New Pretty, directed by Lee Lewis, brings to the stage the fight to establish the AFLW.
Butel has built a program he calls a “season of dream teams”, mixing new voices with acclaimed artists. The Australian premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning Purpose, directed by Zindzi Okenyo, examines power, legacy and family conflict. David Wenham returns to STC for the first time in 26 years with An Iliad, adapted from Homer by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, while Pamela Rabe and Sam Worthington star in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable. Miranda Otto and Ewen Leslie reunite for Jez Butterworth’s The River, a meditation on intimacy, memory and desire.
The Sydney premiere of My Brilliant Career, adapted by Dean Bryant, Matthew Frank and Sheridan Harbridge and directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, transforms Miles Franklin’s classic into a punk period musical about ambition and independence. Helen Thomson leads the Australian premiere of Steven Moffatt’s The Unfriend, a dark comedy about good manners gone wrong.
Butel himself steps back on stage in Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, directed by Bryant, charting the early fight to bring attention to the AIDS crisis. Justine Clarke takes on Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys, while Emily Steel’s political satire Housework places Indira Naidoo, Susie Youssef and Emily Taheny in a Canberra comedy of culture wars, scandals and motherhood. Jonathan Biggins rounds out the season with The Gospel According to Paul: The Second Coming, his biting look at Paul Keating’s legacy.
For Butel, the 2026 STC season is a nod to the artists who shaped his own career and an investment in the next generation of performers and creatives. He sees live theatre as a space where audiences can sit together, hear different perspectives and maybe leave seeing the world a little differently.
With more than 80 performers across the season including David Wenham, Miranda Otto, Sam Worthington, Googoorewon Knox, Keiynan Lonsdale, Sisi Stringer, Justine Clarke, Pamela Rabe, Helen Thomson, Jonathan Biggins, Ewen Leslie and Guy Simon, STC’s 2026 program begins with Whispering Jack but strikes a bigger note: a landmark year of Australian stories, made for Australian audiences.