Flinders University’s acclaimed Drama Centre concludes its 2025 performance season with two landmark productions that chart a journey from the emerging to the eternal — FutureShocks: New Voices on Stage and Medea in Exile, a major new Australian work by Tom Holloway and Emma Cole.
Presented over two successive weeks, this double season invites audiences to experience both the daring originality of Adelaide’s next generation of artists and a bold reinvention of one of theatre’s foundational stories, by one of our most important playwrights.
Together, they illuminate the continuum of performance at Flinders — where new voices meet enduring myths, and each generation renews the meaning of theatre.
FutureShocks: New Voices on Stage
Queens Theatre, Adelaide
Directed by Anthony Nicola
November 20-21
Tickets: https://events.flinders.edu.au/events/futureshocks-new-voices-on-stage/
The graduating Honours ensemble of the Bachelor of Performance launches the season with FutureShocks: New Voices on Stage, a vibrant anthology of new short works created and performed by emerging theatre-makers whose ideas, forms, and experiences are redefining what Adelaide theatre can be.
Directed by Anthony Nicola, the production gathers an array of stories both personal and political, combining humour, provocation, and raw honesty. These works emerge from a year-long creative development process in which students generated original material drawn from their own worlds; exploring contemporary questions of identity, belonging, and the role of the artist in uncertain times.
Presented in the historic Queens Theatre, FutureShocks captures the spirit of Flinders Drama Centre, known for producing actors and directors who make as well as perform. It signals the arrival of a new wave of South Australian voices – the writers, performers, and creative leaders who will shape the future of the artform.
Medea in Exile
Drama Centre, Flinders University (Bedford Park)
Directed by Hannah Smith, Kiara Skene, and Renato Musolino
November 26-29
Tickets: https://events.flinders.edu.au/events/medea-in-exile/
The following week, the spotlight returns to Flinders’ Bedford Park campus where the Drama Centre will present the first ever staging of Medea in Exile, a bold new triptych created by acclaimed playwright Tom Holloway and classicist Dr Emma Cole.
This fully-staged performance will contribute to the work’s final phase of development and offers audiences an exclusive first look ahead of its future professional world premiere.
This remarkable new trilogy examines Medea’s journey through the lenses of exile, reinvention, and survival. Staged across multiple indoor and outdoor locations at the Bedford Park campus, the production culminates in a powerful site-responsive performance under the open sky, in anticipation of Adelaide’s new Sister City relationship with the home of Greek drama, Athens.
Performed through a collaboration by students of all three of the Drama Centre’s courses, Acting, Directing and Theatre-Making, the production showcases the extraordinary talent of these young artists, while supporting the evolution of one of the most ambitious new works in contemporary Australian theatre.
“Medea in Exile is my attempt to give this extraordinary character the epic scale she deserves,” says Tom Holloway. “It has always frustrated me that so few female characters in our canon are allowed such journeys, and that our great female actors so rarely have the chance to inhabit them. This play is a first step in addressing that imbalance.”
Dr Emma Cole adds: “Euripides’ Medea is just one chapter in a much larger story. By returning to lost texts, vase paintings, and mythic fragments, Tom and I have reconstructed a broader Medea — one who is more complex, contradictory, and enduring than the single image of the vengeful mother. In this project, the ancient and contemporary meet in dialogue.”
The trilogy spans Medea’s lost prelude and aftermath: from her childhood as a priestess presiding over human sacrifice, through her erased encounter with Herakles, to her later exile in Athens where she again confronts betrayal and violence.
“These two productions speak to the continuum of our work,” says Dr Christopher Hurrell, Drama Centre Manager.
“Our students are trained not just to perform, but to innovate — to find their own artistic voice while engaging deeply with dramatic tradition. This dual emphasis on invention and interpretation is what distinguishes the Drama Centre, and what connects our emerging artists to the wider life of Australian theatre.”
Performance Details:
FutureShocks: New Voices on Stage – November 20 and 21.
Venue: Queens Theatre, Playhouse Lane, Adelaide
Tickets: https://events.flinders.edu.au/events/futureshocks-new-voices-on-stage/
Medea in Exile – November 26-29
Venue: Drama Centre, Flinders University (Bedford Park)
Tickets: https://events.flinders.edu.au/events/medea-in-exile/
Presented by: Flinders University Drama Centre – Bachelor of Performance