Griffin Theatre Company’s 2025 season celebrates immediacy and finds common ground

Highlights of the Griffin Theatre Company’s 2025 subscription season include an eerily timely play about the nuclear energy debate, a cross-generational nudist comedy about climate change, and the return of a “tender and powerful story about love, country, and Black queerness.”

Opening on Wednesday (25 September), the season reflects the uncanny immediacy of theatre, creates common ground across social boundaries and promotes contemporary Australian drama from both newcomers and theatre veterans.

“When I look back over the last 45 years of Griffin, I am amazed at how our stage has consistently predicted the future. Unlike television and film, theatre is not burdened by months and years of post-production. It can be flexible and responsive,” said Griffin’s artistic director Declan Greene in a media release.

The 2025 season “is all about playwrights as visionary artists, as direction-setters – playwrights who feel the pulse of our community and predict the next wave of social change before it even happens. The nuclear debate, climate change, generational conflict. But among all these big ideas, just like life itself, there is also tenderness, forgiveness and community,” Greene said.

Griffin’s Deputy Artistic Director Andrea James, a Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai woman, will lead the season opener, corea new piece by Alana Valentine.

“It is a two-person play that you think is a debate about nuclear energy, and Alana certainly didn’t intend to write this piece because the debate about nuclear energy is so heated right now; it was just a nice happy coincidence,” says James Art Center.

“Alana is not so much interested in the issue of nuclear energy as such, but in how different political opinions are being pushed to extremes around the world today, in America but also in Australia. And indeed, these polar opposites have one common factor, which is their passion for what they believe in. They are actually more similar than they dare to think. [the play] is just this exquisite two-person piece about these two people, a nuclear scientist and a nuclear activist, who … have this kind of love and respect for each other. It’s such a clever piece.”

Also scheduled for Griffin’s 2025 season are koreabooabout the attempts of a young woman growing up in Australia to overcome cultural boundaries and reconnect with her Korean birth mother, which is the debut of playwright Michelle Lim Davidson (The spring in the net, The news anchor) and Ang Collins’ irreverent Nudismdirected by Greene, tackles climate change and generational conflict, in this case between a group of baby boomer nudists and a fugitive Gen Z eco-influencer who invades the baby boomers’ off-grid eco-paradise during an unbelievably hot summer.

Performed by a naked cast, Nudism is “extremely funny, but also really important,” says James.

“I think that just completely exposing ourselves and making ourselves vulnerable helps us understand how vulnerable we really are as a planet.”

First published in 2022, Whitefella Yella Tree by Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg returns next year with great interest, one of three First Nations works – alongside Declan Furber Gillick’s Jackie (a Melbourne theatre group [MTC] Production presented by Belvoir as part of the Sydney Festival) and an encore season of the Queensland Theatre/MTC co-production 37 by Nathan Maynard – which will be performed again in 2025.

“Despite the [result of the] Referendum, which we are still shocked by, I think people want to hear our voice and sit with us and our experiences, and we want to give that to each other,” says James Art Center.

The possibility of re-performing works such as Whitefella Yella Tree is “a really positive indicator that there is an audience for [these plays],” she continues, and also an important opportunity for First Peoples playwrights to further hone their craft.

“Let’s face it, it’s pretty tough out there at the moment, so it’s great that artistic directors are willing to give us another chance – but it also means we get to develop as writers within a canon, rather than just doing the classic and getting a shot at ticking a box in the programme, thank you very much, next. You know what I mean? We get that chance to really develop our craft, and that’s the beauty of a revival.”

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Importantly, the SBW Stables Theatre will be closed in 2025 for extensive renovation and none of the company’s works will be open in 2025 (including two other works, SISTER by lolanthe and Birdsong of Tomorrow by Nathan Harrison, presented as part of the Griffin Lookout artist development program) will be performed at Griffin’s home in Darlinghurst.

Currently, the Griffin Theatre is at full capacity with 191 seats. Once the renovations are complete, the theatre will not only be 44% larger, but will also be fully handicap accessible.

“We always joke that the next year or so will be our couchsurfing years. And in a way, that’s a kind of liberation. I [thought] “Well, this is a chance to go big, because we’re always in this tiny little space, you know? It encourages us to be a little bit bigger and more ambitious… But we’ve always managed – and this was so encouraging when we went to Carriageworks, for example – to bring the spirit of a place with us,” says James.

Subscriptions for Griffin’s 2025 season will be available starting Thursday, September 26 at 10:00 a.m.