During June and July, Flinders Drama Centre is bringing together internationally recognised and nationally significant artists to work alongside students for two ambitious new performance projects: Oranges and Lemons and Wrestling with Catastrophe.
With both projects, students have the opportunity to sharpen their expertise and unique voices by collaborating directly with outstanding professional artists, including Glace Chase (2025 Drama Centre Playwright in Residence), Basil Hogios (2025 Assemblage Artist-in-Residence) and Gerrard McArthur (2026 Drama Centre International Visiting Artist).
These projects highlight the Flinders Drama Centre's approach: integrating professional artistic activity into teaching, so that students learn through participation in contemporary creative work rather than through simulation alone.
Oranges and Lemons - which will be presented in the Flinders University Drama Centre on June 19, in collaboration with Assemblage Centre for Creative Practice Research - is a new performance work by renowned Australian playwright and performer Glace Chase with composer Basil Hogios. The production has been developed within Assemblage's creative practice infrastructure, The Cube - a 32-speaker ambisonic performance environment.
In Oranges and Lemons, three figures are trapped in an increasingly unstable web of intimacy, memory, and emotional dependency, shaped by the extraordinary musical sensitivity of its central character, whose inner world gradually begins to overwhelm the reality around them.
This will be performed by Chase and visiting UK actor Gerrard McArthur, along with third-year acting student Oscar Baldwin. The work explores how live composition, spatial sound and performance can shape audience experiences of character, intimacy and rupture.
McArthur returns to Adelaide, continuing a long association with Flinders' Drama Centre and Adelaide audiences, that dates back to the 2000 Adelaide Festival production of The Ecstatic Bible by Howard Barker.
Immediately after his performance in Oranges and Lemons, McArthur steps into the director's chair to lead the creation of Wrestling with Catastrophe, a major ensemble project marking Barker's 80th birthday. Bringing together student performers and theatre-makers from across the Drama Centre, the project explores the influence of Barker's unique theatrical language through an ambitious process of image-making, heightened text and ensemble experimentation.
The production also welcomes two-time Tony-award winning lighting designer Nigel Levings, whose experience from an extensive international and Australian career will provide students with direct exposure to professional theatrical design and collaboration.
Together, these projects create opportunities for Flinders Drama students to work alongside artists at different stages of their careers and across multiple performance traditions - from contemporary writing and experimental sound practice to large-scale theatrical design and ensemble creation.
Christopher Hurrell, Manager of Flinders Drama Centre, says: "At Flinders, we are interested in creating conditions where learning and professional practice happen together. Students are not stepping out of training to encounter the industry later. They are already working alongside artists making ambitious new work.
"These projects allow students to experience how professional performance is actually made: collaboratively, experimentally and in dialogue with artists who bring deep professional experience and distinctive creative voices."
Workshop showings and public outcomes will be presented across June and July.
- Performance tickets for Oranges and Lemons - at 3.30pm and 6.30pm on Friday June 19 - can be obtained here or through Flinders' Assemblage website: www.flinders.edu.au/assemblage
Glace Chase is a multiple award-winning Aus/American "trans-queen" / performer / playwright / comedienne / screenwriter / artiste. Glace has been there, done that in a career that defies easy categorization with Time Out NYC calling her "delightfully satanic". She wrote & starred in Sydney Theatre Company/Queensland Theatre Co's hit play Triple X, earning rave reviews and nightly standing ovations. Triple X was shortlisted for both the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and Nick Enright Prize. Glace was 2025 Flinders Drama Centre Writer in Residence.
Basil Hogios is a composer and sound designer working internationally in film, television, performing arts, album production and art installation. He has collaborated extensively with leading Australian theatre companies, including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Belvoir Street, Bell Shakespeare, and Griffin Theatre Company, as well as independent and Arts Festival hits. His contributions encompass both music composition and sound design. He was the 2025 Assemblage Centre for Creative Practice Research Artist in Residence at Flinders University.
Gerrard McArthur is an internationally regarded actor, director, and teacher whose career spans major European theatre institutions, contemporary classics, and some of the most demanding heightened performance traditions in modern theatre. A long-time collaborator of playwright Howard Barker and Principal Artistic Associate of Barker's company The Wrestling School, McArthur is widely recognised for his work on complex, language-driven performance. Gerrard is the 2026 Flinders Drama Centre International Visiting Artist, continuing an engagement with Adelaide's theatre culture which began with his major role in the 2000 Adelaide Festival production of Barker's eight-hour epic The Ecstatic Bible.
The Cube at Flinders University, is the only ambisonic studio in South Australia. Ambisonic sound technology captures and recreates sound from all directions, creating an immersive listening experience. One of only a handful of such facilities worldwide, The Cube is used by artists and researchers to develop immersive sound design projects. For Oranges and Lemons, The Cube has been located in the Flinders Drama Centre Rehearsal Room, facilitating experimental creative practice research into the integration of ambisonics and live performance.
