FUTURE STAGE SYMPOSIUM
13 - 17 July, 2026
A national gathering for Australia’s independent theatre and performance makers
Future Stage Symposium is a five-day national gathering for Australia’s independent theatre community: a space for artists, producers, and creative leaders to reflect on where the sector is, connect across regions and practices, and collectively shape what comes next.
Hosted by Theatre Works, Future Stage Symposium brings together mid-career and established independent practitioners alongside a small cohort of early-career delegates, for an intensive week of provocation, exchange, and practical strategy. The Symposium is designed for people who make the work and those who make it possible: artists, producers, artistic directors, and independent companies, with invited participation from funders, programmers, peak bodies and major subsidised company leaders as speakers and guests.
table of contents
Vision and intellectual frame
Future Stage Symposium is grounded in the belief that independent performance is not merely a sector within the arts economy, but a critical site of cultural research, experimentation, and social imagination.
The Symposium is built around a set of guiding questions that sit at the intersection of art form, ecology, and agency:
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What is theatre now? what is it becoming? What forms are emerging?
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How are audiences, participation, and cultural value shifting?
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Where does labour sit within the current ecology, and who carries risk, responsibility, and unpaid work?
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What is missing from the sector, including producing capacity, development pathways, resources for makers, ?
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How do independent artists and companies relate to venues, festivals, councils, funding bodies, and major organisations, and what does genuine reciprocity look like in practice?
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If the arts do not neatly fit a growth-driven economic model, what alternative measures of value and success should guide our work?
Determined to be a solution focused week, Future Stage also asks:
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What collective influence does the independent sector hold, and how can we galvanize and collectively lobby?
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How can independent artists and producers engage more strategically with funding systems, institutions, and policy frameworks?
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What kinds of shared language, priorities, and relationships are needed to strengthen the sector’s capacity to advocate for itself?
Future Stage is designed to be open, direct, and willing to engage with complexity. It makes space for disagreement and different perspectives, without drifting into either polite consensus or unproductive frustrations. The aim is not to arrive at a singular manifesto, but to build clarity, confidence, and a stronger sense of what collective action might look like in practice.
The Symposium is grounded in the lived experience of artists and producers. It focuses on how work is actually made, supported, and sustained, while recognising that those working in the independent sector are not only shaping the art form, but setting the terms for what it could look like on both the literal and figurative future stage.
Program architecture
Future Stage Symposium at a glance linked HERE
Outcomes
Future Stage Symposium is designed to produce outcomes that participants can take directly back into their practice, while allowing space for new directions to emerge through the conversations and work of the week.
By the end of the Symposium, participants will have:
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Developed clearer ways of articulating their work, its value, and its place within the broader ecology
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Gained practical strategies for making, producing, and sustaining work under current conditions
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Built new relationships across artists, producers, venues, and regions that can continue beyond the Symposium
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Identified specific opportunities for collaboration, touring, or shared development
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Strengthened their ability to engage with funders, institutions, and partners with greater confidence and clarity
Alongside these outcomes, the Symposium is designed to respond to the room. Through facilitated sessions and working groups, participants will shape aspects of the conversation in real time, identifying priorities, testing ideas, and developing approaches that reflect their current needs and conditions.
This includes:
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A shared understanding of where labour, risk, and responsibility currently sit within the sector
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Greater clarity around structural gaps and pressures affecting independent practice
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Identification of areas where collective action may be possible, and how it might be approached
Future Stage does not aim to produce a single fixed set of recommendations. Instead, it creates the conditions for participants to leave with:
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Concrete next steps relevant to their own practice
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A small number of shared priorities that emerge through the Symposium
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Ongoing points of connection with peers and collaborators
The longer-term value of the Symposium lies in what continues beyond it. Participants leave not only with new ideas, but with relationships, language, and strategies that can be applied, tested, and built upon over time.
Partners and support
Future Stage Symposium invites partners and supporters who share an interest in strengthening Australia’s independent theatre ecology and its capacity to evolve. Support may include financial investment, in-kind contribution, knowledge partnership, or co-hosting elements of the program.
This project is supported by the City of Port Philllip.
International guest artist and public workshops WITH COMPLICITÉ
As part of Future Stage Symposium, Theatre Works is proud to announce two intensive, week-long masterclasses with globally renowned theatre company Complicité.
International training and artistic exchange are vital to a healthy and ambitious performance ecology. They give artists the opportunity to encounter different methodologies, challenge established habits, expand their creative language and build connections beyond their immediate context. These masterclasses offer Australian artists a rare opportunity to work intensively with one of the world’s most influential theatre companies here in St Kilda.
KEY DATES AND COSTS
EOI Open - May 7th
Early Bird Program Announcement - May 27th
Public Program Announcement - June 2nd
EOI Close - June 12th
Please note, EOIs will be accepted on a rolling basis
Future Stage Symposium - July 13 - 17
(including the evening of the 17th)
Costs
Early Career Artist - $0 (subsidised by Theatre Works)
Independent/Self Funded - $180
Salaried - $250