By arts editor Helen Musa

Canberra’s Mockingbird Theatrics is spreading its wings with an ambitious 11-play season for 2027, as Chris Baldock’s independent theatre company enters its third year as company-in-residence at Belconnen Arts Centre, it was announced on Friday.

Under the banner, Our Third Act, the company is presenting its most expansive season yet, combining award-winning plays, an Australian premiere and, what has become a house speciality for Baldock, rediscovered classics.

The program traverses the absurdist world of Eugène Ionesco and the psychological pauses of Harold Pinter to contemporary playwrights like Sarah Ruhl, Andrew Bovell and Lauren Gunderson, with a likely crowd-pleaser, The Da Vinci Code.

Baldock says the company’s growing audience has encouraged it to take greater risks and expand its ambitions.

“When we began our residency at Belco Arts, we wanted to create a home where remarkable plays could come to life and where Canberra audiences could experience great writing brought vividly to life at close quarters,” he recollects.

“Three years later, that audience keeps growing, and they’ve given us the confidence to be increasingly ambitious about the work we put on stage.”

The eight-production MainStage season opens in February with Ionesco’s Exit the King, directed by Jack Spahr, a comedy that depicts the final hour and a half in the life of the 400-year-old King Berenger the First, a name that will resonate with fans of Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros.

It is followed by Gunderson’s Silent Sky, based on the true story of pioneering astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, and Bovell’s Australian family drama Things I Know To Be True.

Ruhl’s reimagining of the Orpheus myth, Eurydice, sees the famous heroine arriving in the underworld, Eurydice has forgotten life after being dipped in the River of Death, while July’s Moonlight & Magnolias, by Ron Hutchinson, is a comic exposé of the side of Hollywood we never get to see.

Baldock’s blockbuster will be the Australian premiere of The Da Vinci Code, adapted for the stage by Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel, the team behind The Girl on the Train, which Mockingbird staged in 2026.

Then in October there’ll be Jane Anderson’s four-character dramatic comedy The Quality of Life follows, before the year concludes with a three-actor adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Alongside MainStage, the company’s Mockingbird Too program returns with three shorter seasons designed to explore more adventurous territory, often with newer directors.

These include Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, the razor-sharp comedy The Lifespan of a Fact, by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, and Pinter’s Betrayal.

Baldock says, “We’ve always believed there is an audience in Canberra hungry for exceptional plays performed with honesty, imagination and heart. They’re proving us right.”

All productions will be presented at Belconnen Arts Centre. Subscription packages are available here and offer access to post-show question-and-answer sessions with casts and directors.

At a glance:

Mockingbird Too season

• The Vagina Monologues, Mockingbird Theatre, January 27 to 30.
• The Lifespan of a Fact, Mockingbird Theatre, March 17 to 20.
• Betrayal, Mockingbird Theatre, September 29 to October 2.

MainStage Mockingbird

• Exit the King, Mockingbird Theatre, February 17 to 27.
• Silent Sky, Mockingbird Theatre, April 14 to 24.
• Things I Know To Be True, Mockingbird Theatre, May 19 to 29.
• Eurydice, Mockingbird Theatre, June 16 to 26.
• Moonlight & Magnolias, Mockingbird Theatre, July 21 to 31.
• The Da Vinci Code, Mockingbird Theatre, August 18 to September 4.
• The Quality of Life, Mockingbird Theatre, October 27 to November 6.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mockingbird Theatre, November 24 to December 11.

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