1 week Ago By Nick Dent
Call it tempting fate, or call it confidence, but La Boite Theatre has announced Macbeth as its lead 2025 production, launching the company’s landmark 100th year. Saying the name of Shakespeare’s Scottish play inside a theatre is supposed to be bad luck, but artistic director Courtney Stewart said that was all the more reason to program it. Weird sisters are doing it for themselves: La Boite’s production of Macbeth will have the three witches telling the entire story and playing all the roles.
Credit: La Boite “La Boite has gone through tough times and prosperous times,” Stewart said. “Our centenary is testament to the fact that this industry is remarkably resilient. “Our particular take on Macbeth in the current socio-political climate is one that feels really interesting to me.
” The bloody tale of a thane who murders his way to the throne will be staged by La Boite as a three-hander, with the three witches (Roxanne McDonald, Mel Ree and Nicole Hoskins) taking on all the roles. Courtney Stewart, artistic director of La Boite Theatre. Credit: La Boite “It’s a short, sharp, punchy version .
.. looking at the way that women and female-identifying characters are connected to their environment and the impact of war,” she said.
Stewart launched the La Boite 2025 season at the Roundhouse Theatre in Kelvin Grove on Tuesday. Also in the season is a collaboration with Dead Puppet Society and playwright Maddie Nixon, We’re All Gonna Die!, which Stewart describes as “a live comic book on stage”. Congratulations, Get Rich! by Merlynn Tong is a comedic ghost story set in a karaoke bar that will tour to Sydney and Singapore after its Brisbane world premiere.
A colonial love story, Whitefella Yella Tree , by Sydney-based playwright Dylan Van Den Berg, will have its Queensland premiere at La Boite. The former La Boite Theatre in Hale Street opened in 1972. Credit: La Boite Christine Comans, author of La Boite: The Story of an Australian Theatre Company , said La Boite was the longest-running now-professional theatre company in Australia.
“A [British-born] lady called Miss Barbara Sisley came to Brisbane as a performer with a tour in about 1916 and it all fell apart, and she stayed on as a speech and drama teacher, and also decided that Brisbane was ready for a company. “With Professor J.J.
Stable, she started the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society in 1925.” Barbara Sisley, founder of the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society, later known as La Boite. Credit: Courtesy Joan Massey Cook The company’s first production was an adult comedy about eloping couples by Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.
A. Milne, The Dover Road , that opened at Brisbane’s Theatre Royal on July 31, 1925. To celebrate this date, La Boite will stage La Boite Encores – readings of 10 of the best productions created by La Boite over the past 100 years, one a week leading up to July 31.
“We’ve been able to bring back some of the original directors and we’re talking to some of the original cast members to come back,” Stewart said. The 10 plays include successful Queensland works such as The Matilda Women , Zigzag Street , The Narcissist and boy girl wall . La Boite Theatre 2025 season Macbeth by William Shakespeare: March 6-22 We’re All Gonna Die! by Maddie Nixon: July 29-August 16 Congratulations, Get Rich! by Merlynn Tong: September 4-20 Whitefella Yella Tree by Dylan Van Den Berg : October 23-November 8 Brisbane Repertory Theatre became La Boite (French for “The Box”) in 1967 when the company moved into its iconic theatre-in-the-round in Hale Street, Milton.
Famous actors such as Deborah Mailman, Leah Purcell, Cate Blanchett, Barry Otto, John Stanton and Geoffrey Rush appeared at La Boite early in their careers, alongside Queensland icons Bille Brown, Sally McKenzie, Christen O’Leary and hundreds more. An amateur, then pro-am company, La Boite became wholly professional in 1993. Stewart said La Boite had secured eight years of funding through the National Performing Arts Partnership Framework, putting it in good stead to begin its next 100 years.
“It solidifies our position as a major theatre company and is absolutely a celebration of all the efforts of every person who’s been through that company,” she said. Comans said La Boite’s longevity was in part due to the dedication of the three women who were its first three artistic directors: Sisley (1925-45), Babette Stephens (1957-69) and Jennifer Blocksidge (1969-75). “The first directors were all women, mainly because no one was thinking that they were going to get paid! These three women were very strong and gave it the beginning that it really needed in order to continue,” she said.
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