Petra Kalive says it was a “no-brainer” to bring David Wenham’s An Iliad to Adelaide after she caught the Lord of the Rings and SeaChange star lead the stripped back twist on Homer’s epic in Sydney this year.

“David Wenham’s performance is so extraordinary in it, as is Helen Svoboda who does all the music and incredible composition,” the State Theatre Company South Australia artistic director tells InReview.

“But what really struck me was the elegant and beautiful theatremaking of that show; simple and extraordinary at the same time, and we don’t often see work that is just so effortlessly elegant.”

Wenham’s Trojan turn will be the first horse out of the gate for Kalive’s 2027 program, running from January 29 to February 18 at the Dunstan Playhouse (just weeks before Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell lead another contemporary Greek tragedy in Robert Icke’s Oedipus next door for Adelaide Festival).

Kalive says that while her 2026 spread sought to cater to the different tastes of the company’s audiences – from the Roxburgh-led thigh-slapper Art to Jacob Boehme’s moving family story Logan St – next year is about taking theatregoers on a “real journey across the year”.

“They might be historical or they might be really modern works, [but] they all resonate with something that’s happening culturally right now,” she says.

For State Theatre’s contribution to the 2027 Adelaide Festival, Kalive has tapped a new work from Margaret Harvey, who she says is “one of the best performers in the country”. Most recently seen directing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the company in 2022, The Dark Matter of Usulal will see Harvey return to the stage for the first time in a decade.

“It’s going to be extraordinary,” Kalive says. “It’s about her ancestry, and about connecting to that ancestry through time, through voice, and through motherhood.”

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In April Kalive herself will take the reigns once again for another reworked classic: Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, last seen on an Adelaide mainstage via State Opera’s 2020 production of Richard Mills and Peter Goldsworthy’s 90s operatic adaptation. Some 12 years after State Theatre Company last took a run at Lawler’s original 1955 play, Kalive will assemble an all-South Australian cast that includes a familiar face from her recent take on Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

While Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a mainstay of high school reading lists and theatrical repertories around the country, Kalive says she was drawn to the story for its relevance rather than a sense of duty.

“What struck me when I read it again was how modern it is; these cane cutters, I guess, are the first FIFO workers, right? It’s story about what it is to grow up and to experience change, and to accept that change, and exist in a new reality. We’re in a moment of incredible social change, so it actually feels like a really modern story – we’re able to see our own lives reflected through this incredible canonical piece from the 1950s.”

Kalive is particularly excited to pair Nathan Page as long-in-the-tooth cane cutter Roo with Anna Lindner – who starred in Earnest – as his off-season paramour Olive.

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“What this play needs is actors who are really great with comedy, and that’s exactly what the team so far has in spades.”

Kalive will crack open another classic in August when she directs Snappy, a reinvention of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House that won Melbourne playwright Michele Lee the 2025 Griffin Theatre Award.

“It’s formally really interesting, and it’s really funny,” Kalive says. “And captures the experiences of so many women, particular in the world right now, where they try to curate this perfect Instagram life. Then for this person, this character, something happens, and she just snaps.”

"He approached the company about wanting to write, and just reading his first draft I got chills."

One of the program’s most intriguing set pieces lands in July with Evil Hour, a new play written by actor James Smith, a regular sight on State Theatre stages who is currently in the middle of The Death of a Salesman’s Adelaide run opposite Anthony LaPaglia. Having appeared in productions like Euphoria, Hibernation, Jack Maggs, The Dictionary of Lost Words and Jasper Jones, this original piece of ‘Australian Gothic’ marks Smith’s first turn as a playwright with the company.

“He approached the company about wanting to write, and just reading his first draft I got chills,” Kalive says.

“It’s not often that a play you read off the page feels scary, and he’s nailed it.”

Drawing initial inspiration from the real-life nineteenth century story of Burra woman Elizabeth Woolcock – the first woman executed in South Australia for murder – Kalive says Smith uses past events as the “jumping off” point for an “incredible piece” about gender, power, and history.

“It’s not about that [case], but it uses some of her circumstances to extrapolate a story which is far scarier and far more spooky.”

Directed by Nescha Jelk, Evil Hour opens in July at the Space Theatre, featuring Smith’s wife Elizabeth Hay – a star in her own right – in a welcome return to the stage.

It’s not the only locally written historical drama in the program, with an adaptation of Pip Williams’ second novel The Bookbinder of Jericho already announced last week by co-producers Sydney Theatre Company. Like State Theatre’s hit adaptation of Williams’ debut novel The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Bookbinder of Jericho will be penned by Verity Laughton and tour to Sydney immediately after its Adelaide premiere.

Petra Kalive says The Bookbinder is a natural evolution for Williams’ and Laughton’s storytelling (Williams also just released the third book in her Dictionary-verse earlier this week).

“They have taken that theatrical language just a step further – it will live onstage so beautifully.”

State Theatre’s Spark program will also return with two new works by independent South Australian theatremakers, with Taylor Nobes’ original musical comedy A Guide to Success in the Workplace (July 8 – 17) and Luke Wiltshire’s Squid (September 30 – October 9).

“Both these works feel like the next step forward in the Spark conversation, about independent South Australian artists finding a voice and a whole new audience, supported by State Theatre.”

Kalive says this year’s Spark productions – with Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner in July and Anthony Nocera’s Log Boy, premiering this week – have already drawn new audiences to the theatre.

“What’s been really extraordinary is just the influx of young people and faces that we don’t normally see at State Theatre Company coming in to see work, see theatre, and feel included in that conversation.”

Reflecting on the challenging conditions for productions around the country – which have seen local stalwarts and large-scale touring productions alike pull the pin – Kalive says that it’s more important than ever for bodies like State Theatre to step into the breach and cultivate the next generation on the stage and in the stalls, to “make sure that we don’t lose the talent before they’re ready to step into and take ownership on the main stage”.

For all the famous faces and familiar texts that keep box offices ticking around the country, it makes works like Evil Hour – and Logan St, which was recently picked up for a Sydney season – even more vital.

“We want to make sure theatremakers see a future here.”

State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2027 program is on sale now