Sydney news

The 2013 program welcomes well-known artists and plays back to Griffin in an electric season that celebrates big ideas and imagination. The company's nine Main and Independent season shows are all-Australian - once again proving that Griffin is more-than-ever the home of great Australian storytelling.

Griffin's Main Season will present four works that wrestle with topical and timeless themes, continuing a trend of combining new works with the revival of Australian and Griffin classics.

Duncan Graham's Dreams in White is a gripping thriller of double lives and urban alienation, marking the first writer/director collaboration to emerge from the Griffin Studio resident artist program. Van Badham's The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars is a sensual and charmingly humorous love story of mythic proportions. Melissa Bubnic's award-winning satire Beached lays bare the mercenary nature of reality television, and turns the microscope on society's insatiable appetite for human misery. Finally, Sam Strong will return from his new role at Melbourne Theatre Company to re-imagine John Romeril's Australian classic The Floating World, a resonating tale of the long-lasting effects of war, last staged at the SBW Stables Theatre in 1975.

In 2013, Griffin's Independent Season includes five diverse new shows, which for the first time are all Australian. Caleb Lewis' Rust and Bone tells three interwoven stories about men pushing their masculinity to the limit. Tahli Corin's Girl in Tan Boots is a delicate and funny play about love, loneliness and the struggle to stay visible in a big city. Vivienne Walshe's Griffin Award-winning This Is Where We Live is a story of unlikely soul mates desperate to escape their small-town hell. Lally Katz's Return to Earth is a touching and hilarious story about family, sacrifice and re-connecting with the world. Finally, Ash Flanders' and Declan Greene's Summertime in the Garden of Eden is a fantastically melodramatic (and sometimes obscene) fringe hit transplanted from a Melbourne garage.

Of the 2013 Program, Artistic Director Sam Strong says, "I am incredibly proud of my third and final season at Griffin. The 2013 Main Season is a perfectly proportioned portfolio: a thriller; a rom-com; a satire and a classic period piece. In 2013, the plays all offer very different experiences, but they all do things you can only do in a theatre. More importantly, they do things you can only do in our theatre."

In 2013, Griffin will continue to establish the best pathways for artists, welcoming four new resident artists to the Griffin Studio - Angela Betzien, Tessa Leong, Iain Sinclair and Sue Smith. Over the next year, these playwrights and directors will collaborate on new work and support the company's program.

www.griffintheatre.com.au