COMMENTARY to Have World Premiere at State Theatre Company South Australia
The Adelaide-based company is based on Kaurna Country in South Australia.
State Theatre Company South Australia will present COMMENTARY, by Ash Flanders. Premiering in August with State Theatre Company South Australia, this work interrogates the ethics of art-making in an era when cancelling people feels like a spectator sport. Performances will run 21 August — 5 September 2026.
Enter Nick, played by Gyton Grantley (Underbelly, House Husbands), a once-promising filmmaker now university lecturer. His controversial debut feature, Low, is being resurrected for a retrospective screening at the Adelaide Film Festival. Low was co-created with his former best friend Hamish, who is now disgraced and presumed dead. The film remains dogged by allegations of abuse and exploitation.
As Nick preps a director's commentary and public appearance at the AFF, the past arrives uninvited via a chorus of women (played by a cast of South Australian actors): student-lover Gen (recent Flinders University graduate Shardae Santos), wife Mish (Anna Steen), former muse Saskia (Kate Cheel), and Frankie (also played by Santos), a teenage girl whose reappearance catalyses a chain of revelations and reckonings that culminate in Nick's fall from professional and personal grace.
Structurally slick, the play mimics the fragmented form of a DVD commentary track: non-linear, reflexive, full of contradiction, omission, and performance.
Director Petra Kalive describes Commentary as 'a work about who controls the conversation and who has the loudest voice. Whose voices are doing the silencing or who is getting silenced?
|
Commentary State Theatre Company South Australia (8/21-9/05) |
|
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR THERRY THEATRE (7/23-8/01) |
|
The Heartbreak Choir State Theatre Company South Australia (11/20-12/05) |
|
Scotch College - Hadestown: Teen Edition Thebarton Theatre (8/06-8/06) |
|
Log Boy State Theatre Company South Australia (10/01-10/10) |
|
LOGAN ST State Theatre Company South Australia (7/24-8/08) |
|
|
Scotch College - Hadestown Thebarton Theatre (8/08-8/09) |
|
POMONA Adelaide University Theatre Guild (8/07-8/16) |
|
Faulty Towers The Dining Experience - Darwin Oaks Elan Darwin (8/20-8/22) |