State Theatre Company South Australia has announced its 2020 season – Mitchell Butel’s first as Artistic Director.

Butel was in London at the end of last year performing in Rumpelstiltskin – a co-production between STCSA and Windmill Theatre Co – when he discovered he had been appointed to the position of Artistic Director, which he took up officially in March this year. “So I spent all my days in a bookshop just reading, reading, reading, so it was actually perfect,” he tells Limelight. “A lot of my dreaming happened then, so when I arrived I was ready to rock and roll. There are some commissions that Geordie [Brookman] had put in place that will hopefully come to fruition in 2021 but the actual 2020 season is programmed by me, which is exciting,” says Butel.

The season opens in February with Dance Nation by Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Clare Barron, a highly original play, which is set at a fierce dance competition for teenage girls, played by adult actors. “Dance Nation and The Writer [which STCSA is presenting in July] both came from me being in London and reading so much. Both of them I read in one sitting, they’re both such ferociously brilliant, intelligent, funny, mind-bending...