Australian theatre is a remarkably fertile crucible for producing a particular breed of director: inventive, provocative, high achieving, and perhaps most notably, young. Influenced and even mentored by the elder statesmen of the Australian stage, like Andrew Upton, Neil Armfield and Michael Gow, a blazing cluster of bright young things still in their 20s and 30s, (Malthouse’s artistic director Matthew Lutton, former Belvoir artistic director Ralph Myers, Helpmann-winner Simon Stone, to name just a handful) have graduated from the low-budget, small-scale venues where they cut their teeth and are now commanding major companies with equally major funding.

Arguably one of the most exciting of these young directors working in Australian theatre today is Kip Williams. At just 29, his list of credits and awards belie his age, but beyond the laurels of his C.V., Williams has repeatedly shown an intense intelligence in his directing, and an impressive capacity for complexity.

Robin McLeavy

In March last year, his visually spectacular production of Suddenly Last Summer for Sydney Theatre Company, combined live action with real-time video projections to capture the smallest nuances of his actors’ reactions. Last July, his staging...