In a tough year on Melbourne’s stages, audiences are lapping up local stories

It’s a tough time in theatre in Melbourne, with funding cuts hitting at the same time as the costs of making and touring shows keep increasing. Combined with a cost-of-living crisis and audiences that are commitment-phobic when it comes to booking tickets, that could create a perfect storm. But the picture is more complex – and positive.

Clever, brave programming is paying off in many quarters and people are seeking the communal experience that only live performance provides.

We are hungry for community, and for shared experiences, says Anne-Louise Sarks, artistic director and chief executive of Melbourne Theatre Company. She has always loved theatre “because of its ability to carry me into other worlds and to inspire me to think about the world differently or to feel something in a way I’ve never felt it before”.

“That’s what audiences are coming back to us for, particularly those very profound emotional experiences.”

When audiences sit together watching a theatre show, their heartbeats often end up in sync. That physiological response, revealed in research by University College London , confirms something regular theatregoers know.

It’s a communal experience unlike any other. There’s an alchemy at work. A collective reaction. A call and response. It’s also sacrosanct: one of few forums in which our phones are turned off.

For director Sarah Goodes, there’s something incredible about being caught off guard emotionally, spiritually. That’s the thrill of live performance, she says. It’s the same in sport. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. Like I always say when I’m directing, a good game’s a close game … the stakes are high when no one knows what’s going to happen next. That’s what you want to try and crack open all the time, that feeling of what’s going to happen.”

Goodes has been instrumental in many significant shows, including Julia , written by Joanna Murray-Smith , with Justine Clarke conjuring the first female prime minister of Australia; Sunday , which told the story of Heide founder Sunday Reed; and Amplified about Chrissy Amphlett , starring Sheridan Harbridge, which Goodes co-created with Harbridge and musical director Glenn Moorhouse.

Her most recent was Break of Day , by actor and writer Steve Rodgers, which premiered at the Malthouse. The story of a single mother – played by Kat Stewart – living in a small country town, butting heads with her teenage daughter and working in an Amazon-style factory may not sound like a compelling storyline but it was a knockout.

Initially, when asked to pitch something for Malthouse, Goodes and Stewart discussed doing an Edward Albee or Sam Shepard play. Then they wondered why they were looking overseas.

Rodgers had sent Goodes the script for Break of Day four years ago and she says it was just “a perfect fit and the perfect time”. “Sometimes plays happen when they’re meant to, and you cannot predict it. There’s a real alchemy to it.”

“This is exactly the sort of play that Kat and Sarah should do,” says artistic director at the Malthouse Dean Bryant.