After a sold-out 2024 season that sparked rave reviews – and prompted at least one audience member to break up with her boyfriend – Matilda Award-winning independent theatre company Salad Days Collective brings Scenes With Girls back to Brisbane this September for a bold new season filled with guts, chaos, laughter and heartbreak.
First staged at PIP Theatre in 2024, Scenes With Girls returns in 2026 as part of Queensland Theatre’s DOOR 3 program and Brisbane Festival, moving into the intimate Diane Cilento Studio for a new season of Miriam Battye’s razor-sharp, darkly funny and devastatingly familiar exploration of the ferocity and fragility of female friendship.
DOOR 3 marks the entrance to Queensland Theatre’s Diane Cilento Studio and, following last years highly successful pilot program, returns in 2026 as a platform for three Queensland-based theatre collectives to stage three bold independent works across three seasons.
For Brisbane-based Salad Days Collective, the program marks an exciting next step for a production that began its journey in the independent theatre scene and returns with even more guts, chaos and heart.
Directed by Ruby Sanders, Scenes With Girls centres on Tosh and Lou, best friends and housemates who exist inside a world entirely of their own making. They have rejected the modern pressures of romance and dating, choosing instead to believe that having each other is enough.
But when the outside world begins to creep in, their all-consuming bond is quietly put to the test. What follows is a messy, hilarious and deeply human examination of what it means to grow up, grow apart and redefine intimacy.
Miriam Battye’s script turns the traditional love story on its head, placing female friendship at the heart of the narrative. Tosh and Lou’s relationship is intimate, chaotic and fiercely loyal. They share private jokes, finish each other’s sentences and navigate life with the shorthand of people who have spent countless hours together. Their friendship is a source of comfort and identity- but also, increasingly, conflict.
The play explores the pressures young women face around sex, dating, romance and identity, while questioning what it means to reject societal expectations and whether that rejection can become its own form of performance.
The 2024 PIP Theatre season received rave reviews for its sharp writing, compelling performances and authentic depiction of contemporary girlhood. Critics praised the performers’ chemistry, the show’s natural comedy and its ability to move from absurdity to genuine emotional devastation.
Founded in Brisbane in 2024, Salad Days Collective is a Matilda Award-winning, artist-led independent theatre company dedicated to bringing young and non-traditional audiences back into the theatre.
The company has quickly built a reputation for provocative, ambitious and visually striking work that centres contemporary voices and dynamic storytelling. With an ethos rooted in accessibility, collaboration and community connection, Salad Days Collective creates high-impact theatrical experiences that challenge expectations and invite new generations of theatre-goers into the room.
Following its acclaimed PIP Theatre season, Scenes With Girls now enters a new chapter at Queensland Theatre’s Diane Cilento Studio, giving audiences another opportunity to experience this urgent, messy and painfully recognisable story of friendship.
Scenes With Girls is presented by Salad Days Collective and runs 4 – 19 September 2026. It runs as part of Queensland Theatre’s DOOR 3 program at Diane Cilento Studio. Queensland Theatre, 78 Montague Road South Brisbane Qld 4101.
Tickets are available here.
Website: https://queenslandtheatre.com.au/plays/scenes-with-girls
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/salad.days.collective/
Images supplied.
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