Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre has announced a 2023 line-up with four mainstage world premieres in the first season programmed by Artistic Director Courtney Stewart, who joined the company in mid-2022. She succeeds Todd MacDonald, who left the company after six years in the role.

“We will tell new stories, stir new emotions and showcase a world that once existed only at the fringes,” Stewart said, adding that the aim of her first season is “to open people’s minds and take them to places they’ve never been”.

The first of the world premieres will be an in-the-round stage adaptation of Wong Shee Ping’s pioneering novella The Poison of Polygamy.

Published in serial form in Melbourne in 1909, this story of a man from southern China trying his luck on the Victorian goldfields is believed to be Australia’s earliest Chinese-language novel. Thai-Australian playwright Anchuli Felicia King’s English-language adaptation of stars Shan-Ree Tan, Merlynn Tong and Kimie Tsukakoshi and is co-produced by Sydney Theatre Company (it plays in Sydney from 8 June).