Malthouse has launched its 2024 season, one featuring a world premiere new work from Geelong’s internationally renowned Back to Back Theatre, a Macbeth reimagined from Lady Mac’s perspective and the return season of a much-lauded stage adaptation of a Nobel Prize laureate’s best-loved work.

Despite the economic headwinds facing all arts companies in 2024, Artistic Director Matthew Lutton is determined not to play safe. Put it this way: Malthouse’s Christmas production is titled Fuck Christmas.

“This is a highly theatrical season,” Lutton says. “There isn’t a moment of domesticity or realism in sight, as every work celebrates theatre that transports you into fantasies, heightened realities, folklore, or ecstasy. It is very deliberately a season of productions celebrating how theatrical theatre can be.”

Zahra Newman: The Hate Race. Photo © Tiffany Garvie

The season opens provocatively in February with The Hate Race, a play inspired by Caribbean-Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke’s unflinching memoir. Zahra Newman (Wake In Fright), plays multiple characters from the book as we follow Maxine from her childhood in Sydney’s western suburbs...