2 hours 20 mins, including interval

This production premiered at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera house on 14 February 2020. This season opened in the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House on 6 April 2024.

This production is supported by the STC Angels. Original production supported by Anita & Luca Belgiorno-Nettis Foundation.

Marketing image Rene Vaile

SYNOPSIS

A local supermarket sits empty after being raided by a group of housewives, sick to the back teeth with the skyrocketing cost of living. The cops are totally at a loss as to where all the loot has been stashed. And all over town women are presenting with mysterious, overnight pregnancies.

From her nearby apartment, Antonia – go-getter, tall-tale-teller and criminal mastermind – surveys the chaos she may or may not have instigated. Along with her BFF and reluctant accomplice Margherita, she attempts to evade the long arm of the law.

When both their husbands start to grow suspicious, Antonia and Margherita have to get creative. What ensues is farce; equal parts insightful and side-splitting, that takes on one of the 20th Century’s most profound showdowns: socialism vs capitalism.

Adapter's note: Marieke Hardy

When Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame wrote this play in Italy in 1974, they were responding to a period of economic and political turmoil and social unrest. Unemployment had risen sharply. Inflation ballooned. Political scandals were rife. 14 million Italians walked off their jobs to demand guaranteed employment, more social security benefits and higher cost‐of‐living adjustments. The health system was in disarray.

Nothing like the modern lucky country we find ourselves in today!

(coughs awkwardly)

In the world created by Fo and Rame, a group of pissed off housewives basically riot in the supermarket when they find the price of groceries has doubled overnight. Outraged, they decide collectively that if the bosses aren’t paying them fairly, then they won’t pay either. Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay. It’s the inciting incident of the play, and sets the tone for happily unfolding chaos as these brazen, desperate women try to hide their stolen goods from their hapless husbands and the long arm of the law.

Two weeks after the play's first performance, women in Milan began taking control of the cash registers in supermarkets and paying prices for items before the sudden raise in costs. Right-wing newspapers considered Fo and Rame’s play to have inspired the incidents. In the end all the women who had been charged were freed because "there was no case to answer". The court decided that those shoppers had paid the correct value of the goods. In Fo’s words, ‘The bosses were the real thieves.’

The first iteration of this adaptation debuted at STC in February 2020. It’s staggering to me – perhaps it shouldn’t be – that in those four years it’s grown even more politically relevant to us as a society.

The world we live in is a brutal, relentless place. For a lot of us really, but particularly for marginalised communities, women, those fighting the climate wars, those trying to feed their family in the face of economic chaos, our transgender comrades, exploited workers. It hurts to care and it sometimes feels too much.

Amidst it all, it’s important to find pockets of light amidst the daily rage. To find collective moments of joy. To seek the energy we need to keep fighting.

I hope you enjoy the play. I hope you get some respite from the fact climate change is cooking the planet, that we’re knee-deep in a housing crisis, that banks fucking suck, and that for some absurd reason K*le S*ndil*nds is still allowed on the radio. I hope you remember that it’s important to stay angry and vigilant, but just as important to laugh in a room full of humans trying our best.

And remember, on your way home tonight, if you see someone stealing food from a supermarket – no you didn’t.

Director's Note: Sarah Giles

I have always been drawn to comedy, but in my earlier years I worried that people thought comedies were just “fluff” and so foolishly spent a while feeling somewhat ashamed of my comedy obsession. Despite this misplaced shame, I would regularly hunt down plays that were comedies; old, new, I didn’t care. At the same time I became obsessed with the Bechdel test and I started hunting down comedies that passed the test. I found a few, and was lucky enough to direct them. This included Bernard Shaw’s lesser-known work Mrs Warren’s Profession and the surreal 1970s play Marriage Blanc by Polish writer Tadeusz Rozewicz, which drew me into the niche bracket of “political comedy”.

It was about this time that I came across Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!. I’d studied Dario Fo and Franca Rame at university but hadn't re-read their work since. As I re-read Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! I was struck by the two women at the core of the piece – they were inspiring, hysterical, perfect. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate Fo and Rame’s genius; the way they kept us laughing as they had trojan-horsed so many political ideas into their play through story, content and form.

I remember my first conversations with Kip about Fo and wanting to bring his work to audiences. I found the parallels between his work and modern Australia somewhat bewildering and breathtaking. When we made this production back in 2020, I remember thinking the play was incredibly relevant. But this was before the pandemic. Before the supermarket shelves were bare. Before the interest rate rises. Before the rental crisis. Here we are in 2024 and it is, devastatingly, even more relevant. How is it that in 2024, half a century after this play was written, it feels like staring into a mirror. Fo and Rame were looking at their present and simultaneously looking into our future. It’s beyond worrying.

I’m sure Dario Fo and Franca Rame would be hugely disappointed we’re still producing their play.  

“Surely it’s not relevant anymore!”

“Haven’t you fixed all those problems!”

“Haven’t you got better problems now!?”

But like the characters at the end of the show (with their feet so movingly planted in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author), we’re stuck. We can’t seem to get out of the whirlpool. We’re trapped in a system that benefits a few and asks everyone else to play by the rules, even when the game is un-winnable.

CAST & CREATIVES

DARIO FO
Writer

Dario Fo, an Italian actor-author, could claim to be one of the most frequently performed playwrights in the world during his lifetime.

Born at Lake Maggiore in northern Italy in March 1926, he made his debut in theatre in 1952 and continued writing and performing until his death in 2016. His work has gone through various phases, always in collaboration and company with his actor wife Franca Rame.

His stage career began with political cabaret, moved on to one-act farces, and then to satirical comedies in his so-called ‘bourgeois phase’ in the early 1960s when he became a celebrated figure on TV and in Italy’s major theatres.

In 1968, he broke with conventional theatre to set up a co-operative dedicated to producing politically committed work in what were then known as ‘alternative venues’. His best-known works, including Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Mistero Buffo and Trumpets and Raspberries, date from this period. 

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, and in the official citation the Swedish Royal Academy stated that he had “... emulated the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden”.

FRANCA RAME
Writer

Franca Rame was born in Parabiago, North West Milan on 18 July 1929. Daughter of Domenico Rame and Emilia Fo, both wandering minstrels, she was born into a family with strong theatrical traditions – Famiglia Rame. She made her theatrical debut as a child and in 1950 left her home and family to begin her career in theatre, film and television.

In 1958, alongside her husband, Dario Fo, she founded the Theatre Company of Dario Fo Franca Rame (Compagnia Teatrale Dario Fo Franca Rame)

She wrote comedies on the female condition such as The Rape (1975), Open Couple (1983), Let’s Talk About Women (1991), Settimo (Septimus?) Steals a Little Less (1992), Sex? Don’t Mind if I Do (1996) and Mother Peace: Let Mothers Decide About War (2005).

Franca Rame collaborated on all Dario Fo’s works. In the 1970s she founded ‘Red Aid’ and in 1988 the ‘Nobel Committee for the Disabled’.

Awards include: Obie Prize (New York 1987), Leon Felipe for Human Rights (Spain1998), Vittorini Prize (Siracusa 1998), Honorary Fellowship (Wolverhampton University 1998), Lifetime Achievement Award (Harvard University and Columbia University 2001), Honorary Degree (Middlebury College, Vermont 2008), Vittorio De Sica Award (Quirinale 2011), Research Doctorate in Music and Entertainment (Sapienza University of Rome 2014). From 2006-8 she was a Senator of the Republic.

MARIEKE HARDY
Adapter

Marieke Hardy is a curator, writer, artist, and producer. She has penned columns for The Age, The Drum, and Frankie magazine, and written for many television shows, including Laid, Erotic Stories, Barons, The Family Law, Heartbreak High, and Seven Types of Ambiguity. She was co-curator of international literary salon Women of Letters and a regular panelist on the ABC's Book Club for 11 years. She is a recipient of the 2015 Sidney Myer Fellowship and currently co-curates monthly spoken word event Better Off Said. Her podcast, Marieke Hardy Is Going to Die, debuted in February 2024.

SARAH GILES
Director

Sarah Giles is an award-winning opera and theatre director. Sarah has directed productions for Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre of South Australia, Malthouse Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Opera Australia, Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, West Australian Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Opera Queensland. Sarah was a Resident Director at Sydney Theatre Company in 2013 and the Richard Wherrett Fellow in 2011. For Sydney Theatre Company Sarah has directed The Importance of Being Earnest, No Pay? No Way!, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Popular Mechanicals (which toured nationally, originally produced by State Theatre Company of South Australia) Perplex, Mrs Warren’s Profession (which had a return season due to popular demand) Marriage Blanc, Money Shots and Ruby Moon.  

Other theatre directing credits include: for Melbourne Theatre Company, A Very Jewish Christmas Carol, The Truth, Straight White Men; for Malthouse Theatre, SS Metaphor, Blaque Showgirls; for Griffin Independent, The Ugly One, The Pigeons; for Red Stitch, That Face; for New Theatre, The Herbal Bed; for NIDA, The Farm, The Bald Soprano; for WAAPA, Vernon God Little; and for La Mama, The Maids. Other works include: Kreutzer vs Kreutzer for the Australian Chamber Orchestra performed with Janácek’s and Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonatas.  

Sarah’s 2022 production of La Traviata has been presented across Australia, most recently for Opera Australia’s 2024 summer season and in July of this year Sarah will direct a new production of Dvořák's Rusalka for the Opera Conference (Opera Australia, West Australian Opera, South Australian Opera and Opera Queensland.)  

Her world premiere production of Lorelei for Victorian Opera was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Direction of an Opera, five Green Room Awards including Best Direction of an Opera, and won the Green Room Award for Best New Australian Work and Best Design. Lorelei was remounted at Victorian Opera and toured to Opera Queensland.  

Her other opera directing credits include: for Opera Queensland, State Opera of South Australia, West Australian Opera, Opera Australia; La Traviata, for Victorian Opera, Lorelei; and for Sydney Chamber Opera and Sydney Festival, O Mensch!; Pas À Pas – Nulle Part; and Into The Little Hill.  

Sarah works as a dramaturg and adapter. She was dramaturg (as well as director) on Lorelei (Victorian Opera), and co-adapter of Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Sydney Theatre Company) and was dramaturg and director on A Very Jewish Christmas Carol at Melbourne Theatre Company.  

In 2011 Sarah won a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Direction of an Independent Production for The Ugly One at Griffin. She is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Directing, and she holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne with a double major in History and Italian. 

ROMAN DELO
Luigi

Sydney Theatre Company: Hubris and Humiliation. Other Theatre: Belvoir: The Weekend. TV: Bump, Ten Pound Poms, Erotic Stories, Home & Away. Awards: 2023 Sydney Theatre Award Nomination for Best Newcomer (Hubris and Humiliation). Training: NIDA. Pronouns: He/Him. 

EMMA HARVIE
Margherita

Sydney Theatre Company: A Cheery Soul, The Harp in the South: Parts One and Two, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other Theatre: Belvoir: The Jungle and The Sea, Counting and Cracking, My Brilliant Career, The Wolves. State Theatre Company of South Australia: Dance Nation. Ensemble: The Last Wife, Taking Steps. Darlinghurst Theatre: The Hypochondriac. Belvoir 25A: The Astral Plane. Old Fitz: The Wolves. TV: Colin from Accounts, RFDS, In Limbo, Frayed, The Letdown, Diary of an Uber Driver. Training: Actors Centre Australia, The Atlantic School. Proud member of Actors Equity. Pronouns: She/Her. 

GLENN HAZELDINE
Giovanni

Sydney Theatre Company: Blithe Spirit (as understudy), Così (with MTC), The Father (with MTC), Away (with Malthouse Theatre), Disgraced, Arcadia, Love and Information (with Malthouse), After Dinner, Perplex, Tot Mom, Elling, The Pig Iron People, Don’s Party (with MTC), Julius Caesar, Victory, Love for Love, Mongrels, Historia, Two Weeks with the Queen, Dead White Males (national tour). Other Theatre: Ensemble: Sorting Out Rachel, Act One, All My Sons, Sanctuary, Face to Face, A Conversation, Charitable Intent, Birthrights, Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica, Happiness, Managing Carmen, Tuesdays With Morrie, A View from the Bridge, Ten Unknowns, The Ruby Sunrise, Rapture, Blister, Burn. Red Line Productions: Amadeus. Merrigong Theatre: As Luck Would Have It, Letters to Lindy (national tour). Daniel Sparrow Productions: Rupert. Bell Shakespeare: As You Like It (national tour). Belvoir: The Judas Kiss (national tour), Rhinoceros. Griffin Theatre Company: A Hoax, Porn.Cake. Seymour Centre: Transparency, Museum of Modern Love. Marian Street Theatre: Labour Day. Wayne Harrison Productions: Stainless Steel Rat. Darlinghurst Theatre: Laurence and Holloman, Every Second. Old Fitz: Last One Standing. Film: Little Monsters, The Little Death, Last Train to Freo, Dripping in Chocolate. TV: Colin from Accounts (seasons 1&2), The Twelve, A Place to Call Home, Anzac Girls, Redfern Now, The Moodys, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting, All Saints, BlackJack, Stingers, Water Rats, Backberner. Positions: President of the NSW branch of Actors’ Equity, Deputy Chair of Actors Benevolent Fund of NSW. Training: NIDA. Proud member of Actors’ Equity since 1995. 

MANDY MCELHINNEY
Antonia

Sydney Theatre Company: The Tempest, Appropriate, Mosquitoes, In the Next Room, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Great, Don’s Party, The Metamorphosis. Other Theatre: Belvoir: Cinderella, Forget Me Not, B Street. Black Swan State Theatre: Dirty Birds, The Glass Menagerie. Brink: When the Rain Stops Falling. MTC: The Hypocrite, Pride and Prejudice, Twelfth Night, Three Sisters, The Balcony. Griffin Theatre Company: Dreams in White. Film: Ned Kelly, The Bank. TV: Wakefield, Bad Mothers, Squinters, Love Child, Hyde & Seek, The Legend of Gavin Tanner, House of Hancock, Paper Giants 2: Magazine Wars, Howzat: Kerry Packer’s War, Moody Christmas, At Home with Julia, Bed of Roses, Comedy Inc. Awards: 2013 AACTA Award for Best Guest or Supporting Actress in a Television Drama for Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War.

AARON TSINDOS 
Sergeant/Inspector/Undertaker/Old Man

Born in the USA and raised in Australia, Aaron comes from a proud Greek (Cypriot, Ithacan), Jewish (Ashkenazi) family. Sydney Theatre Company: A Fool in Love, The Importance of Being Earnest (as Alternate), The Tempest, The White Guard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Road Train, Cyrano de Bergerac, Muriel’s Wedding The Musical (with Global Creatures). Other Theatre: Ensemble Theatre: Clyde’s. MTC: Shakespeare in Love. Belvoir: The Overcoat. Hayes Theatre: City of Angels, Merrily We Roll Along, Dubbo Championship Wrestling, Spamalot, Big River, Meet Me in St. Louis, Big Fish, The Goodbye Girl. Sport For Jove: The Importance of Being Earnest, Love’s Labours Lost, Shakespearealism, The Comedy of Errors. Sydney Opera House: The History Boys. Film: Spin Out, No Appointment Necessary, Crossing Paths. TV: Total Control, Growing Up Gracefully, Mary: The Making of a Princess. As Filmmaker: Many works with his production company General Legends. Awards: Sydney Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Mainstage Production 2021 (No Pay? No Way!), Best Actor Tropfest 2013, IndieFEST, London World Wide Comedy Short Film Festival. Proud member of Actors’ Equity since 2009. Pronouns: He/Him. 

CHARLES DAVIS
Designer

Sydney Theatre Company: The Importance of Being Earnest, Do not go gentle..., Rules for Living, No Pay? No Way!, The Real Thing, The Wharf Revue 2021, The Wharf Revue 2019, The Wharf Revue 2018. As Associate Set Designer: Muriel’s Wedding The Musical (with Global Creatures). Other Theatre: Bell Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Stephanie Lake Company: Manifesto. Ensemble: Buyer and Cellar, The Kitchen Sink, Widow Unplugged. Token Events: Lano & Woodley: Fly (National Tour). Darlinghurst Theatre Company: An Act of God. Griffin Theatre Company: Smurf in Wanderland (with the National Theatre of Parramatta). Redline Productions: The 7 Deadly Sins + Mahagonny Songspiel, Happy Days, The Whale. Seymour Centre: Unfinished Works. Darwin Festival: A Smoke Social. Squabbalogic: The Dismissal. Opera: Opera Queensland: La Traviata. Pinchgut Opera: Médée, The Coronation of Poppea, Artaserse. Sydney Chamber Opera: Breaking Glass, Biographica, Oh Mensch!. Queensland Conservatorium: Hansel and Gretel. As Associate Set Designer: Opera Australia: Carmen, The Merry Widow. Positions: Lecturer and mentor at NIDA. Awards: Mike Walsh Fellowship, 2022 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Set Design of an Independent Production (Happy Days) Training: NIDA, Monash University. 

PAUL JACKSON
Lighting Designer

Sydney Theatre Company: Oil, Do not go gentle...,The Lifespan of a Fact, Death of a Salesman, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Mary Stuart, The Children (with MTC), Away, Love and Information, The Histrionic, The Threepenny Opera, The Trial (all with Malthouse Theatre), True West, The Mysteries: Genesis, Venus & Adonis (with Bell Shakespeare/ Malthouse Theatre), Frozen (with MTC). Other Theatre: includes QT: Our Town, First Casualty. Bell Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, As You Like It, Phedre, Tartuffe, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew. Belvoir: Life of Galileo, Seventeen, Nora, Oedipus Rex, Happy Days, It Just Stopped. Malthouse Theatre: Nosferatu, Anna K, The Return, Solaris, Cloudstreet, Blasted, Melancholia, Bliss, The Testament of Mary, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man, Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, I Am a Miracle, Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid, Edward II, Timeshare, Night on Bald Mountain, The Government Inspector, Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday, Wild Surmise, On the Misconception of Oedipus, Blood Wedding, Hate, Dance of Death, Bloody Chamber, A Golem Story, Little Match Girl, Die Winterreise, Human Interest Story, Elizabeth – Almost By Chance A Woman, Furious Mattress Knives in Hens, Optimism, Happy Days, Woyzeck, Sleeping Beauty (also Co-Creator), The Pitch, The Ham Funeral, Journal of the Plague Year, The Odyssey, Boulevard Delirium. Melbourne Festival: Anthem (tour). MTC: The Sound Inside, Cyrano, Home, I’m Darling, Arbus and West, Gloria, Hay Fever, Di and Viv and Rose, Three Little Words, Private Lives, Miss Julie, Endgame, The Speechmaker, Private Lives, Ghosts, The Crucible, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Madagascar, Enlightenment, Ghost Writer, Frozen, The Recruit, Dinner, 26 Cruel, Tender. Victorian Opera: Happy End, Cassandra, Echo and Narcissus, Lorelei, Albert Herring, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Through the Looking Glass, Ariadne Auf Naxos. Chamber Made Opera: Crossing Live, The Hive, The Possessed, Teorema, Recital, Walkabout, Corruption. TML: Fiddler on the Roof. GFO: Dream Lover. Awards: Helpmann Award for Best Lighting Design for Little Match Girl. Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Lighting Design for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Love and Information. Green Room Awards: Best Set Design for I Am a Miracle; Best Lighting Design for It Just Stopped, Body of Work, Recital, Away, Testament of Mary, Melancholia; Best Cabaret Design for Gotharama. Gilbert Spottiswood Churchill Fellow (2007). Australia Council Fellow (2017). Australian Production Design Guild Awards: Best Lighting Design for Love and Information, Away, The Testament of Mary and Solaris; Best Multi-Discipline design (set and lighting) for Monsters. Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland for Best Lighting Design for Solaris. 

STEVE FRANCIS
Composer & Sound Designer

Sydney Theatre Company: Julia, Wudjang: Not the Past (with Bangarra Dance Theatre), The 7 Stages of Grieving, Appropriate, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, How to Rule the World, The Long Forgotten Dream, Still Point Turning, The Children (with MTC), Talk, The Hanging, Disgraced, Arcadia, Orlando, Battle of Waterloo, After Dinner, Switzerland, Mojo, Travelling North, Machinal, Vere (Faith) (with STCSA), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Secret River, Sex with Strangers, The Splinter, Under Milk Wood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pygmalion, Bloodland, Blood Wedding, The White Guard, Hamlet, Tusk Tusk (with ATYP), Leviathan, Spring Awakening - A New Musical, The Removalists, Rabbit, The Pig Iron People, Gallipoli, The Great, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Embers, The 7 Stages of Grieving, Fat Pig, A Hard God, Stolen. Other Theatre: Griffin Theatre Company: A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il, The Bull, The Moon and the Coronet of Stars, Between Two Waves, This Year’s Ashes, Speaking in Tongues, Strange Attractor. Belvoir: Every Brilliant Thing, Winyanboga Yurringa, The Sugar House, Angels in America, Babyteeth, This Heaven, Don’t Take your Love to Town, The Power of Yes, The Book of Everything, Gethsemane, The Man from Mukinupin, Ruben Guthrie, Baghdad Wedding, Keating!, Paul, Parramatta Girls, Capricornia, Box the Pony, In Our Name, Gulpilil, Page 8, The Spook. MTC: The Weir, The Sublime, Other Desert Cities. Bell Shakespeare: Hamlet, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Duchess of Malfi, Romeo and Juliet. Bangarra: Dark Emu, Bennelong, Nyapanyapa, Lore, Belong, Fire, True Stories, Skin, Corroboree, Walkabout, Bush, Boomerang. The Australian Ballet: Totem. Film: Tales by Light, The Turning, Last Christmas, dik, The Burnt Cork, Mr Patterns, Box, Black Talk, Djarn Djarns. TV: Cops LAC, Dangerous, Double Trouble, Chopper Rescue, Macumba, Picture the Women. Awards: 2014 Sydney Theatre Award (Henry V), 2012 Helpmann for Best Original Score (Belong), 2003 Helpmann for Original Score and Best New Australian Work (Walkabout), 2011 Sydney Theatre Award (The White Guard). 

TAIT DE LORENZO
Assistant Director

Sydney Theatre Company: The Picture of Dorian Gray (2022 Sydney season and 2023 tour), Blithe Spirit, Triple X (with QT). Other Theatre: NIDA: pool no water, Ah, Tuzenbach, A Melancholic Cabaret. As Director: AFTT: Emerge. Old 505: Hard Body B Cup. Belvoir 25A: Horses. Belvoir Shut Down Residency: They Took me to a Queer Bar. NIDA: Respectable Wedding, DIANA, Private View. Sydney Chamber Opera: Fabulous Friends (development). The Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts: Texture. Brand X: Room 8. Film: Spook Kiki, Oops, I Did It Again, Jane Doe, Opia, Untucked. Positions: Director of independent theatre company KUNST, Program coordinator at Kaldor Public Art Projects, Resident curator at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, Program curator for The Art Gallery of NSW’s Free Film Screening Program and For Film’s Sake Festival, recipient of Create NSW and Griffin Theatre Company Incubator Fellowship. Recipient of NIDA Freddie J Gibson Fellowship. Awards: Untucked was the recipient of Best Documentary at The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers Film Festival. Training: NIDA, JMC. 

TIM DASHWOOD
Fight & Movement Director

Sydney Theatre Company: As Fight Director: A Fool in Love, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Death of a Salesman, No Pay? No Way!, Lord of the Flies. Other Theatre: Opera Australia: Miss Saigon, Whiteley, West Side Story on Sydney Harbour, Krol Roger, Faust. shake & stir theatre co.: Fourteen, Fantastic Mr Fox, Jane Eyre, George’s Marvellous Medicine. Griffin: Jailbaby, The Lewis Trilogy. The Ensemble: Alone it Stands. ATYP: Saplings, The Deb, Intersections: Arrival, War Crimes. Belvoir: Tell Me I’m Here, Fangirls, Opening Night, The Life of Galileo. Hayes Theatre Company: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Dubbo Championship Wrestling. National Theatre of Parramatta: Girls in Boys’ Cars. Bell Shakespeare: The Players. Darlinghurst Theatre Company: Let The Right One In. Kwento: One Hour, No Oil, Ate Lovia. Merrigong Theatre Company: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As Luck Would Have It. New Theatre: Loot, The Removalists. Outhouse Theatre Co: Ulster American.  Empress Theatre: Cyprus Avenue. Sport for Jove: Rose Riot, Servant of Two Masters, Measure for Measure, Fallen. As Actor: shake & stir theatre co.: Fantastic Mr Fox, Animal Farm, Dracula, Wuthering Heights, George’s Marvellous Medicine. Kay & McLean Productions: The Graduate. Bell Shakespeare: Richard III. Darlinghurst Theatre Company: A Chorus Line (As Understudy), Deathtrap. Gordon Frost Organisation: Fame: the Musical. Queensland Theatre Company: Managing Carmen, The Odd Couple, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Rabbithole, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Exception and the Rule. The Escapists: Packed. La Boite Theatre Company: The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay. Positions: President of the Society of Australian Fight Directors incorporated. Training: University of Southern Queensland, Certified by the Society of Australian Fight Directors incorporated. 

CHARMIAN GRADWELL
Voice & Text Coach

Sydney Theatre Company: The President, A Fool in Love, The Seagull, The Importance of Being Earnest, Constellations, Do not go gentle..., Fences, The Tempest, The Lifespan of a Fact, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Fun Home (with MTC), The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Mary Stuart, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Harp in the South: Part One and Part Two, The Long Forgotten Dream, Saint Joan, Blackie Blackie Brown (with Malthouse Theatre), Still Point Turning, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Lethal Indifference, Top Girls, Dinner, The Father (with MTC), Black is the New White, Talk, Chimerica, A Flea in Her Ear, All My Sons, Disgraced, Hay Fever, Arcadia, The Golden Age, King Lear, The Present, Suddenly Last Summer, After Dinner, The Long Way Home, Travelling North, Machinal, Waiting for Godot, Romeo and Juliet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Storm Boy (with Barking Gecko), The Maids, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Sex with Strangers, Under Milk Wood, Gross und Klein, Bloodland, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), Uncle Vanya, A Streetcar Named Desire, The War of the Roses, Tot Mom. As Director: The Comedy of Errors. Other Theatre: As Voice & Text Coach: QT: Triple X (with Sydney Theatre Company). Royal Shakespeare Company: The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, The Canterbury Tales (tour), A Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Days of Significance, Macbeth, The Penelopiad, Noughts and Crosses, The Comedies London Season, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The London Gunpowder Season, Romeo and Juliet, Comedy of Errors. As Dialect Coach: Muriel’s Wedding The Musical (with Global Creatures), Aladdin, Assassins, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, The Tap Brothers, Xanadu the Musical. As Director/Trainer: A year with Space 2000 in Kaduna, Nigeria. Film: As Dialect Coach: Elvis, Peter Rabbit 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Reaching for the Moon, Truth, Ginger & Rosa. Other: Voice trainer for London School of Puppetry. Member of London Shakespeare Workout, which brings Shakespeare into UK prisons. Training: Central School of Speech and Drama. 

CORPORATE PARTNERS

Sydney Theatre Company celebrates the support of our valued corporate partners. Find out more about our current partners.

OUR DONOR COMMUNITY

Thank you STC Angels for your unwavering commitment to our work.

Anita Belgiorno-Nettis AM & Luca Belgiorno-Nettis AM
Jane & Andrew Clifford
Alan Joyce AC & Shane Lloyd
Gretel Packer AM
Rebel Penfold-Russell OAM
Ruth Ritchie
Rosie Williams & John Grill AO

Thank you to our donors at all levels, who support a bright future for STC.

View your acknowledgement.

If you would like to help STC continue to be one of the largest employers of artists and theatre-makers in Australia, please make consider making a tax-deductible donation.

SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Ann Johnson (Chair)
Anita Belgiorno-Nettis AM
Brooke Boney
Mark Coulter
David Craig
Anne Dunn
Heather Mitchell AM
Gretel Packer AM
David Paradice AO
Annette Shun Wah
Kip Williams

See Sydney Theatre Company’s full staff list.