Storyland playwright Aunty Barbara Nicholson, director Leland Kean and playwright and author Catherine McKinnon are gearing up for (hopefully) a January 2027 debut of an epic stage adaptation — on Country. Photo: Children of the Revolution.
The “largest piece of professional theatre made in Illawarra” is expected in January 2027 following Merrigong receiving landmark funding.
The not-for-profit theatre company received a generous portion of $7.5 million from the inaugural Creative Futures Funds, which this year supported 20 ambitious, large-scale creative projects spanning every state and territory.
Merrigong will use the $750,000 grant to bring to life a production of epic proportions many years in the making, staged outdoors in the shadows of our majestic escarpment.
The outdoor theatre adaptation of Illawarra author Catherine McKinnon’s acclaimed novel Storyland is an ambitious work exploring our identity, past, present and future, and our connection to this land.
McKinnon joined forces with Wadi Wadi elder and UOW academic Aunty Barbara Nicholson to co-author the adaptation.
A work of extraordinary imagination, it tells five interconnected stories spanning centuries. In a non-linear fashion, they chart a journey from 1796 when Bass, Flinders and a young boy named Will Martin sailed down from the young colony in Sydney Cove and encountered the Allowrie people at the mouth of Lake Illawarra, to the year 2717, as an airship hovers above a forever-changed Illawarra region devastated by a cataclysmic climate disaster.
Merrigong Artistic Director and CEO Simon Hinton says the production has been a dream since 2018, but the theatre company didn’t have the capital to do it justice.
“This is not a story for a four-hander in a black box theatre — it needed to be told on an epic scale. It needed to be outside, on Country, connected to land,” he says. “The Creative Futures funding has provided that path.”
Merrigong Artistic Director and CEO Simon Hinton says the production will be physically, technically and visually spectacular. Photo: Jeremy Park.
Aiming for a January 2027 debut, the funds will allow Merrigong to hire talent, build multi-levelled infrastructure and employ audio-visual technology — including video and drone — to create an immersive, destination masterpiece unlike anything else.
“It will be physically, technically and visually spectacular,” Hinton says.
The company is producing a podcast-style audio prologue that audiences travelling from Sydney or the Highlands can listen to to orient them to the place and “set the stage”.
The project is expected to cost $1.35 million in total, and Merrigong is expecting to make the shortfall with box office sales, sponsorship and philanthropy.
“We have key partnerships we’re finalising around the project but that’s the scale,” Hinton says. “To my knowledge, it’ll be the largest piece of professional theatre made in Illawarra.”
Of the 20 projects funded — selected from 283 expressions of interest across the country — 14 were for creative development and six towards creating a work for public delivery — of which Merrigong was one.
Hinton says skyrocketing production costs and the uncertainty of audiences have made productions increasingly rare.
The Creative Futures Fund is an initiative of the National Cultural Policy Revive, intended to jumpstart “works of scale”.
“I believe they were looking for works of national significance that were uniquely Australian and which were not ‘business as usual’ — but a bit extraordinary,” Hinton says.
“It’s an amazing opportunity for the company and recognises the work we’ve been doing for 15 years to build capacity to tell the stories of our region and develop artists regionally and to do that on a larger and larger scale.
“Now here we are. This is a landmark production for Merrigong and the region.”
