Belvoir announces 2027 season with nine major productions, from intimate Australian stories to international classics, across Surry Hills from January to December.
There is something particular about arriving at Belvoir St Theatre in Surry Hills. The building does not announce itself with the grand scale of a major performing arts centre. Instead, it sits among the terraces, trees and busy streets of the inner city, close enough to the rhythm of Sydney that the sounds outside never feel entirely separate from what happens inside.
In 2027, that relationship between theatre and the city becomes particularly apparent.
When Belvoir announces 2027 season programming, it does so with a collection of nine productions that moves between Australian stories, international works, contemporary drama and reimagined classics. There are stories about home, housing, friendship, ambition, memory, violence and belonging. There are journeys from Surry Hills to Iran, from a recording studio to the Kimberley, and from a small Irish cottage to the imagined edges of the universe.
The season begins in January and runs through December, with the Upstairs Theatre providing its main stage throughout the year. Alongside it, the Downstairs Theatre will host the continuing 25A program of independent theatre, while several additional events sit around the main season.
It is a program that feels less like a collection of disconnected productions than a portrait of the questions contemporary theatre keeps returning to: who gets to stay, who has to leave, what makes a home, and what happens when the world around us changes faster than we can adapt.
Belvoir Announces 2027 Season With A Story About Memory
The year begins with GAME. SET. MATCH., written by Gamilaroi actor and writer Megan Wilding and directed by Jessica Arthur.
Running from 7 to 23 January 2027, the play follows Josh, the son of a famous tennis player, on the night of his mother's funeral. He meets Ray, and over the course of a long night, the two move between flirtation, argument, memory and revelation.
The play arrives in Sydney from Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre as part of Sydney Festival, giving the Belvoir 2027 Season an opening that is intimate rather than spectacular. At its centre is the complicated inheritance of family memory and the question of what remains after a celebrated person is gone.
The opening performance is scheduled for 9 January at 7.30pm, with the season generally offering evening and weekend performances through its limited run.
The Downstairs Theatre will also come alive in January with Redfern Renaissance, returning for its third year from 15 to 23 January. Creative Director Angeline Penrith brings together music, performance and conversation celebrating Redfern's First Nations artists, storytellers and cultural leaders. Performances are scheduled for 6pm on selected nights.
For a theatre so closely associated with the history of Surry Hills and the inner city, the choice feels fitting.
The Lark And A Vanishing Sydney
In February, the Belvoir 2027 Season turns its gaze firmly towards Sydney.
The Lark, written by Daniel Keene and directed by Matt Scholten, runs from 10 February to 7 March. Noni Hazlehurst plays Rose, a woman who has spent her life working in a small inner-city pub called The Lark.
For Rose, the pub is more than a workplace. It is a universe of memories, routines and ghosts. But the neighbourhood is changing, and demolition is approaching as gentrification moves through the streets around her.
The story has an especially resonant quality in a city where familiar pubs, shops and houses can disappear within a few years. Hazlehurst's connection to Belvoir goes back to the company's earliest days, adding another layer to a play concerned with the disappearance of places and the memories held within them.
The production runs for 1 hour and 15 minutes without an interval. Regular performances include Wednesday and Thursday evenings, Friday at 7.30pm, Saturday matinees and evenings, and Sunday afternoons, with variations across the season.
Stereophonic Brings The Recording Studio To Surry Hills
By March, the mood changes.
- Stereophonic*, written by David Adjmi with original songs by Will Butler, arrives from 20 March to 25 April. Directed by Daniel Evans, the Tony Award-winning play follows a rock band recording the album that could make them famous while their personal relationships begin to fracture.
The setting is a recording studio. The drama unfolds through repeated takes, arguments, performances and the small tensions that accumulate when creative ambition meets exhaustion and ego.
It is a story about making something together while simultaneously coming apart. The recording studio becomes both workplace and pressure cooker, a contained world where artistic obsession and personal conflict cannot easily be separated.
Preview performances begin on 20 March at 7.30pm, with the opening night scheduled for 24 March. The season continues through 25 April, with Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, Thursday matinees and evenings, Friday evenings, Saturday performances and Sunday afternoons forming the regular pattern.
For the Belvoir 2027 Season, it is one of the year's largest-scale departures from specifically Australian subject matter, but its concerns remain recognisable: collaboration, ambition and the difficult business of living and working alongside other people.
Belvoir Announces 2027 Season With A Dangerous Classic
In May, Belvoir revisits one of the most recognisable dystopian stories of the twentieth century.
A Clockwork Orange runs from 8 May to 6 June. Anthony Burgess's novel is adapted by Tom Wright and directed by Margaret Thanos.
The story centres on Alex, a fifteen-year-old fascinated by Beethoven and capable of extreme violence. After imprisonment, he becomes the subject of the Ludovico Technique, a state experiment designed to suppress criminal behaviour.
Wright's adaptation approaches the material as a contemporary fable about violence, free will and the desire of governments to control behaviour. Thanos, a resident artist at Belvoir, directs the production following her work on A Mirror in 2026.
Preview performances begin on 8 May at 7.30pm, with the opening night on 12 May. The regular season runs until 6 June.
The production brings a darker edge to the middle of the Belvoir 2027 Season, asking questions that have not become any less complicated with time.
From Sydney To The Wider World
June brings The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, running from 12 June to 18 July.
Written by Jane Wagner, the work is best known for the distinctive one-woman performance created by Lily Tomlin. For Belvoir, Robyn Nevin takes on the central role in a production that moves between comedy, observation and a wider contemplation of humanity.
The title itself suggests the scale of the journey. Rather than remaining within one family, neighbourhood or historical moment, the play looks outward, considering human behaviour from a perspective that is both playful and philosophical.
That shift in scale is characteristic of the Belvoir 2027 Season. One production can be intensely local, concerned with a Surry Hills terrace or a disappearing pub, while the next considers humanity from a much wider vantage point.
The season continues into July and August with Dirty Diamonds, written and directed by Kalkadoon artist Abbie-lee Lewis.
Running from 31 July to 22 August, the road drama follows Cassie, a Kalkadoon forensic investigator, and Jordan, a Noongar DJ, as they travel from Perth towards the Kimberley with a biker ex pursuing them.
It is a story about two women who initially have little reason to know one another, finding themselves thrown together on the road. The journey becomes a return to Country as well as an unexpected encounter between two very different personalities.
The production is co-produced with Melbourne Theatre Company and presented in association with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company, continuing the season's emphasis on collaboration between Australian companies.
Wish You Were Here Looks Towards Iran
Late winter brings Wish You Were Here, written by Sanaz Toossi and directed by Mehhma Malhi and Ayah Tayeh.
The play runs from 28 August to 19 September and is set in Iran in 1978, as protests against the Shah become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Inside a suburban home, a group of friends continue with weddings, jokes and ordinary routines while the political situation outside deteriorates. The women must gradually confront the question of whether to remain in Iran or leave, and what is lost whichever decision they make.
The intimate scale of the story is important. Political upheaval is experienced here not through grand historical scenes but through friendships, conversations and the private decisions people make when the future suddenly becomes uncertain.
Performances generally take place Tuesday through Sunday, including Thursday matinees and evening performances, with the opening night scheduled for 1 September at 7.30pm.
Belvoir 2027 Season Turns To Sydney Housing
In September, the season comes back to the streets outside the theatre.
The Landlord, written by Grace Chapple and directed by Hannah Goodwin, runs from 25 September to 24 October. It is set in Surry Hills in 2027, where a 65-year-old landlord lives in one terrace house while his adult children and the tenants next door become increasingly entangled.
Property is the immediate subject, but beneath it are questions of family, wealth, ageing and the extraordinary pressures created by Sydney's housing market.
The story places the property debate inside a family birthday gathering, where personal resentments sit alongside the much larger economic realities of contemporary Sydney. The result is a distinctly local premise, rooted in the streets surrounding Belvoir itself.
Preview performances begin on 25 September, with the opening night scheduled for 29 September at 7.30pm. The regular season continues until 24 October.
Dancing At Lughnasa Closes The Year
The Belvoir 2027 Season closes with Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, directed by Eamon Flack.
Running from 6 November to 12 December, the play is set in rural County Donegal in 1936, where the Mundy sisters live together on the edge of poverty. Their quiet domestic life is unsettled when the possibility of the annual harvest festival begins to awaken a hunger for something beyond their daily routines.
It is a play concerned with family, memory, faith and the fleeting nature of happiness. For a season that repeatedly asks what happens when familiar worlds begin to disappear, it provides a fitting final note.
Preview performances begin on 6 November at 7.30pm, with opening night on 10 November. Regular performances continue through December, including Thursday matinees and evenings, Friday evenings, Saturday performances and Sunday afternoons.
There is something appropriately theatrical about ending the year with a story in which music and movement briefly overwhelm ordinary life.
A Season Shaped By Place
Taken together, the Belvoir 2027 Season moves across a surprisingly large map while remaining anchored in the physical and emotional landscape of the city.
There is Redfern, Surry Hills, a disappearing pub and a pair of terrace houses. There are journeys across Western Australia, a suburban Iranian home and a Donegal cottage. There is a recording studio and, eventually, the possibility of intelligent life somewhere beyond Earth.
Belvoir has also described the theatre's history as a reminder that its existence was never guaranteed. In 1984, arts workers Sue Hill and Chris Westwood gathered around 600 people to save the building from redevelopment. Four decades later, the question of how a theatre survives remains closely tied to questions about community, resources and who gets to tell stories.
That context gives the Belvoir 2027 Season an added resonance. The theatre is not simply presenting stories about changing places. It is itself a place that has changed, survived and continued to make room for new voices.
Season tickets are available in four-play packages from $215, with individual production prices varying. Belvoir's standard performance pattern generally includes evening performances during the week, Saturday matinees and evenings, and Sunday afternoon performances, although individual productions have their own schedules and exceptions.
Belvoir St Theatre is located on Gadigal Country at 25 Belvoir Street, Surry Hills, Sydney. The official 2027 program and booking information is available through Belvoir St Theatre's 2027 Season page.
As another year begins to take shape in Sydney, the theatre's small auditorium will continue doing something the city itself rarely allows time for: making strangers sit together in the dark, listen to the same story and consider a life that is not their own.
Outside, Surry Hills will keep changing. Houses will be renovated, businesses will come and go, and the traffic will continue along Belvoir Street. Inside, for a few hours at a time, another kind of city will appear.
That may be the most enduring thread running through the Belvoir 2027 Season: the simple act of gathering, before the lights go down, to see what can still be shared.