Geelong’s internationally renowned theatre company returns with a work that boldly interrogates inequality, and the structures supposedly in place to address it.

An ensemble of actors who identify as neurodivergent or having an intellectual disability, Back to Back Theatre have been asking difficult questions in daring ways for more than 30 years. Which is why they keep winning awards, most recently the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre early this year.

Their latest offering, Multiple Bad Things, premiered in their regional Victorian hometown in April before playing in Brussels and Melbourne and is devised by a group that includes the four-strong cast and co-directors Tamara Searle and Ingrid Voorendt. It sees three workers slowly completing a structure made of poles. Chat turns to conflict among these figures, played by Sarah Mainwaring, a company stalwart, Scott Price and Bron Batten, who appears to be non-disabled.

Simon Laherty in Back to Back Theatre’s Multiple Bad Things. Photo © Jeff Busby

Simon Laherty, who has been with Back to Back for 20 years, plays a character suggestive of a supervisor, sitting to the side in front of a computer oblivious to...