Sydney Theatre Company presents a State Theatre Company South Australia production

Housework

By Emily Steel
Directed by Shannon Rush

2 hrs 10 mins, including interval

This play premiered on 11 Feb 2024 at the Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide.

This season opened on 9 Sep 2026 at Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

You are about to see a play in which there's a lot of juggling, a lot of plate-spinning, a lot of hoop-jumping and maybe even a clown or too.

But it occurs not in a tent but in the highest halls of power in our nation’s capital.

In Emily Steel’s Housework, we find various smart, dedicated, tireless and tenacious women juggling politics, media, motherhood and men who, to be honest, are not spinning the plates with the alacrity and precision of their female counterparts.

The women who have created this production are, likewise, experts and know how to pull both rabbits and rapture out of an audience’s hat!

As Artistic Director of State Theatre Company South Australia, I had the great pleasure to work beside Emily Steel, who had won the Jill Blewett Playwright’s Award administered by the Company, and who was then commissioned to write a play for us. Emily was interested in all aspects of women in power in politics and at all levels – Ministers, Chiefs of Staff, Advisers, Interns. And thus began a journey that resulted in a knockout world premiere season of this play at the Adelaide Festival Centre.

I’ve rarely been in an audience of such vocal responses – laughter, gasps of shock and surprise, cheers for just desserts being served. And I have a feeling Sydney will make similar sounds.

Emily also wrote another tender, tough and wryly witty play for STCSA in my time there called Euphoria which toured regionally and nationally to great praise. I’m thrilled that her work once again can be seen on the East Coast now. And her skill and wit are so immense, I know her work will cross other distances to the world stage soon.

During my tenure at STCSA, I had the equal privilege and delight of working with Associate Artist Shannon Rush who directed the show you’re about to see with such panache, passion and poise.

Adelaide also delivered me the goddess that is Ailsa Paterson – one of the most exquisitely innovative and classy designers with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work. You can see her fine handiwork in this show and in Girls & Boys, playing at the Wharf at the same time.

And before Covid killed the Helpmann Awards, I had a lot of fun hosting its final outing with one of this show’s leading ladies, the ferociously funny Susie Youssef with whom I became very fast friends. Her talent is ablaze in this show as MP Ruth Mandour.

My already full heart also made room for the towering talents that are Emily Taheny and Franca Lafosse who dazzled in the Adelaide season. And to now see the iconic Indira Naidoo join this wondrous web of women – well, I’m done!

While the women run the world of this play, it’s a thrill to see two such lovely and gifted blokes like Johnny Nasser and Laurence Boxhall join the team too.

All of them, plus the fine creative team who created such a successful and acclaimed show, are all reassembled to give you the most fun you’ve ever had by the shore of Lake Burley Griffin.

Prepare to yell “Order! Order” because the chaos is set to begin.

Indira Naidoo

Set during a chaotic sitting week in Canberra, the play follows Kelly Sheppard, an enthusiastic young electorate officer who is thrilled to accompany her idealistic boss, first-term MP Ruth Mandour, to the nation's capital. Alongside them is Ruth's brilliant but exhausted Chief of Staff, Anna Cooper, who is juggling political strategy, family pressures and the relentless demands of life in public office.

As policy launches, media storms and power plays collide, Kelly finds herself swept into a world where ambition, loyalty and personal integrity are constantly tested. Behind every headline lies a network of backroom negotiations, political manoeuvring and human frailty, exposing the personal cost of pursuing change from within the system.

Emily Taheny

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: I’m not going to tell you who I talked with, and I’m not going to tell you exactly what they said, because a) I promised I wouldn’t, which is why they were able to tell me as much as they did and b) where’s the fun in that? This way, you can try to guess - and you’ll probably be wrong, which is fun for me.

In the research for Housework, I talked with politicians, political staff and parliamentary staff in both State and Federal parliaments. I read a lot of books. I absorbed the news in all the usual ways. Then I tumbled it around in the washing machine of my brain, on too high a temperature, until the colours ran and it went out of shape, and then I wrote the play. Housework is a fiction. The events are not real and the people are not real - though of course they’re inspired by things that are very real. Before the original season, I was afraid that, in fictionalising it as I did, I’d gone too far, until feedback from people who have worked in that world told me it was unnervingly accurate. As gratifying as this is, part of me wishes it were further from the truth.

Enormous thanks to everyone who was generous enough to talk with me. Thanks to Mitchell Butel, for commissioning this in the first place and then bearing with me while it became a completely different play to the one I originally pitched. Thanks to everyone at Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company South Australia who have worked to bring Housework to the stage. Thanks to Tully Barnett and the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University, who supported the research to the extent that they helped me take my family to Canberra because I was breastfeeding - how’s that for genuinely exploring the barriers between women and power? Thanks to Shannon Rush and Tahli Corin, whose feedback on drafts of the script made it better. Thanks to the excellent cast(s), for bringing all these characters and words to life. And thanks to Chris, Frank and Ivor, who continue to put up with me and all the weirdness I call work.

I hope you enjoy the show and if you find yourselves arguing about it in the bar afterwards, I will be delighted.

Shannon Rush

I feel incredibly lucky to be the director of this extraordinary new play by one of my favourite Australian writers, Emily Steel.

Emily’s forensic approach to research, her sharp eye for detail, and her astute ability to illuminate big ideas through the tiniest human moments is such a joy. She writes people, not characters. They are messy, funny, contradictory, ambitious, and gloriously flawed.

Housework gives us a darkly funny peek behind the marble foyer, into a world of power, ambition, influence and deceit. At its heart, the play is an exploration of the profound gender inequalities that continue to shape our political landscape, and the double standards and impossible pressures faced by women — particularly when family, career and ambition collide — within a system that has, for so long, been designed by and for men.

But what I love most about Housework is that it doesn’t hand us any easy answers. Instead, it plunges us head-first into the grey areas and asks us to wrestle with questions of morality, manipulation, agency and power. What are we prepared to sacrifice to win? Where does compromise end and corruption begin? What happens when our democratic system itself isn’t quite as equal as we’d like to believe?

I have absolutely loved sinking my teeth into these questions with this brilliant company. Our rehearsal room has been intense in the very best possible way. We’ve had big, robust, conversations, followed by lots of laughter. There’s nothing quite like being in a room full of smart, generous artists who are willing to play.

I hope you enjoy watching this production as much as we’ve enjoyed making it. And I hope your foyer conversations are as juicy as the twists and turns in the play.

Original Assistant Director James Watson

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Sydney Theatre Company Board of Directors

Ann Johnson (Chair)
David Craig (Deputy Chair)
Anita Belgiorno-Nettis AM
Brooke Boney
Mitchell Butel
Sarah Constable
Mark Coulter
Anne Dunn
Sam Meers AO
Heather Mitchell AM
Kate Mulvany OAM
David Paradice AO
Annette Shun Wah
Rosie Williams

See Sydney Theatre Company’s full staff list.