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
Why Future Stage, why now
Across Australia, independent theatre and performance artists are creating some of the most ambitious, responsive, and formally adventurous work in the sector.
Working across devised, collaborative, interdisciplinary and text-based forms, independent practitioners continue to expand what theatre can be: experimenting with scale, audience, authorship, and participation in ways that shape the future of the art form. This work is deeply connected to contemporary life, engaging with changing social conditions, new technologies, and shifting modes of attention and gathering.
By sheer number of artists, companies and projects, the independent ecology represents a significant proportion of Australia’s performing arts activity. It is a space of innovation, risk, and cultural research where new ideas are tested, new voices emerge, and new forms are developed.
Independent artists and organisations have also been at the forefront of evolving practice in relation to access, inclusion, and diversity not as an add-on, but as a driver of artistic form, process, and audience relationship. Disability-led practice, First Nations leadership, and culturally diverse perspectives are reshaping how work is made, experienced, and shared, offering models that extend across the broader sector.
At the same time, the conditions under which this work is made are complex. Artists and producers operate across multiple roles, build projects from the ground up, and navigate a landscape that includes venues, festivals, funding bodies, and major organisations, each with different capacities and expectations.
What remains largely untapped is the collective potential of this ecology.
Taken individually, independent artists and companies often operate at the edge of available resources. Taken together, they represent a significant body of knowledge, experience, and influence with the capacity to shape conversations around artistic value, infrastructure, and the future of the sector more broadly.
Future Stage Symposium recognises both the strength of this ecology and the opportunity it presents.
It creates a dedicated space for independent practitioners to come together not simply to reflect, but to share knowledge, challenge assumptions, and build new approaches to making, producing, and sustaining work.
This is a space to step out of day-to-day production and into a broader conversation about practice, audiences, infrastructure, and value. A space to connect across regions and disciplines. A space to test ideas, form relationships, and consider what is possible next.
Future Stage is grounded in the belief that the independent sector is not peripheral to the performing arts landscape: it is central to its ongoing vitality and evolution.
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 runs over five full-time days and is structured to balance shared conversation with focused, practical work.
Each day begins with the full group coming together for a series of short provocations from invited speakers. These sessions introduce different perspectives on the day’s theme and set up the key questions for the rest of the program.
From there, participants move into smaller sessions across multiple spaces. At key points throughout the day, participants are invited to choose where they want to spend their time, allowing them to follow the conversations, topics, and working groups most relevant to their practice.
These smaller sessions include:
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facilitated discussions that unpack ideas raised in the morning sessions
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practical workshops led by artists and practitioners
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focused working sessions looking at specific challenges such as producing, touring, audiences, and sustainability
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peer-led conversations and informal knowledge sharing
While the program is carefully structured, it allows for a degree of flexibility and responsiveness. Participants can move between different streams across the week, shaping their own pathway through the Symposium and engaging more deeply with the areas most relevant to them.
Across the day, there is a clear shift from shared provocation into smaller group exploration, and then into more applied, practical work.
Across the week, the focus moves between:
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the future of the art form and how work is being made
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the realities of audiences and participation
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the structure of the sector and how it operates
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practical strategies for working within and across those conditions
Time is also built in for informal connection, including shared meals, social events, and opportunities to engage with local performance.
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
Future Stage Symposium will include an invited international guest artist whose practice aligns with the themes and questions of the Symposium.
The artist will contribute to the program as a keynote speaker and provocateur bringing international perspectives into conversation with the Australian independent sector.
Our guest international artist will also lead a skills development masterclass at a discounted rate for participants. Giving Australian independent artists the opportunity to engage with their methodologies, approaches, and ways of working. These sessions are designed to complement the Symposium’s broader inquiry by grounding discussion in embodied practice and shared exploration.
In addition to delegate participation, a limited number of workshop places will be made available to the wider public offering access to high-quality international training and fostering connection with the local artistic community.
Participation and selection process
Future Stage Symposium is designed as a curated gathering, with participation shaped through a combination of open expression of interest and targeted invitation.
Expressions of interest for delegates are now open. Early applicants will receive access to the full program as it is confirmed, along with early bird registration.
Invitations to provocateurs, keynote speakers, and invited guests are also being extended. These roles are primarily curated to ensure a balance of perspectives across the program. However, artists, producers, and thinkers who are interested in contributing in this capacity are welcome to submit an expression of interest for consideration.
The Symposium aims to bring together a balanced cross-section of the sector. The delegate cohort will be structured approximately as:
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70% established and mid-career independent artists, makers, and producers
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20% representatives from venues, policy, funding, and subsidised organisations
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10% early-career practitioners
A limited number of places will be reserved for early-career artists, with registration fees covered by Theatre Works. This ensures access to the Symposium for emerging practitioners while maintaining a primarily experienced cohort.
The selection process is guided by a commitment to diversity of practice, perspective, and background, as well as a strong focus on participants who are actively engaged in making, producing, or supporting independent performance.
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