Sport For Jove today announced it will reluctantly pause its traditional Summer Season in 2027. The company will still produce a number of events in 2027, including an outdoor production of The Tempest, created exclusively for Merrigong Theatre Company’s Theatre Under the Stars.
Also on the calendar for 2027 is a huge education program for NSW teachers and students, a Queensland tour of Miranda Middleton’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the world premiere of Damien Ryan’s new play Prometheus, and a special “in conversation” event with leading Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, presented in partnership with Shepherd’s Purse Theatre Company.
See the full statement regarding Sport For Jove’s Summer Season announcement below:
Dear Sport for Jove patrons, artists, supporters, and friends,
For seventeen years, we’ve made theatre together. Heading now into our eighteenth year, it is with enormous sadness that we need to let you know, we are unable to present our traditional summer season at this time. A very difficult thing to say.
It has been beyond a joy to gather every summer, in parks and gardens, under open skies, in Leura, and Bella Vista, and many other spaces, in heat and rain, in hurriedly re-shaped wet weather venues, gathering with Shakespeare, but most importantly, with you. (And a pretty loyal collection of bats and birds, snakes, cats, possums, sheep, cicadas and Christmas beetles, and our most devoted fan, of course, ‘tempests’.)
In that near-two-decade period of summer floods, fires, pandemics, changing governments, changing funding landscapes, changing audiences and changing ideas about what theatre can and should be, we have shared with you in the making of thirty-five very special productions, made specifically for the outdoors, made by more than 340 artists and technicians, played to over 100,000 people.
But numbers are just numbers, what we think most about in moments like this are the people. The first-time audience member who discovered that Shakespeare could belong to them. That older gentleman at our very first performance in 2009, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who approached me at the close of the show and said it was his first ever trip to the theatre, that he loved the play, and asked, “Is the author travelling with you, I’d love to meet him.”
The students who came with their class and returned with their families. The lifelong Shakespeare lover who came year after year. The person who came because their loved one was performing. The person who came because they had never seen a play outdoors. The kids who came through our Second Age Project and ended up starring in our mainstage seasons years later. The people who sat under a tree, on a rug, beside strangers, and for a couple of hours entered another world. With us.
We thank every single one of them, especially those storms, because they have exemplified our very special relationship with you, our audience, whose good grace and patience has been simply extraordinary as we tried to live up to our charter, that – the show must go on.
That’s what Sport for Jove has always been about. This year, the show simply can’t go on. And that has been an extraordinarily difficult decision. There is no single or dramatic reason for it. The truth is both simpler and harder: sustaining ambitious, professional, independent theatre in Australia has become increasingly difficult.
The venue hires, accommodation, ticketing fees, insurance, transport, equipment, rehearsal space, technical infrastructure – all the associated costs of making theatre have risen enormously. The resources available to independent unfunded companies have not kept pace with that swelling tide.
The fundamental thing we have always wanted to do remains the same, to make really good theatre in places where audiences don’t have easy and regular access to it. But we cannot do it at the expense of the people who make it, or at the expense of the work itself, by not being able to adequately remunerate the people who make it.
So, rather than compromise the quality, generosity and ambition that you have come to expect from us, we have decided to pause, for a moment. Hopefully not to stop, hopefully not forever, but to pause for one season and reframe how we can achieve a sustainable future for our signature outdoor season, in our in traditional venues, and the aim is, in many more places and spaces around NSW.
But this decision really hurts. Seventeen summers is a long time. I feel a strong sense of failure personally that I have not been able to achieve sustainability for the event. But above all, I feel an immense debt to so many people. Sport for Jove has survived and, at times, flourished because a remarkable group of people believed — and continue to believe — that theatre really matters and that Shakespeare, particularly in the open air, for which these plays were originally purposed, can be something magical.
So I want to say thank you. To every person who bought a ticket. To every person who brought a friend. To every teacher who brought a class. To every family who made an evening of it. To every audience member who laughed, particularly those who laughed loudly, cried, particularly those who cried loudly, argued with us, loved a production, hated one, or stayed afterwards to tell us what they thought. You gave the work life.
And above all, we want to thank the incredible artists and technicians who have made these seventeen years possible: our actors, directors, designers, composers, musicians, dramaturgs, stage managers, production teams, photographers, publicists, administrators, teachers, volunteers and our donors, all the people whose names may never have appeared on a poster but without whom none of it could have happened.
It is easy to forget that in the independent theatre sector, artists are among the chief donors and sponsors of theatre making, with their time, their travel, their expertise and sheer hard work.
And to the venues and organisations who have opened their gates, gardens, theatres and spaces to us over the years: thank you for trusting us with them. Outdoor theatre is an act of collaboration. You give us your small piece of the world, and for a few weeks we transform it together. So many people have given so much of themselves to Sport for Jove. We owe you an enormous debt of gratitude, thank you for allowing us to keep trying.
But this is not a goodbye. It is an opportunity to think about what comes next and to find the means do that sustainably. Theatre cannot be built by companies alone. It needs audiences. It needs artists. It needs venues. It needs philanthropists and partners and supporters. It needs teachers and students. It needs people who believe that culture is not an optional extra but part of what makes a community a community.
But right now, we are not calling for your help, we are telling you the truth about where we are; we are not asking you to rescue us in the same breath.
If you have been part of Sport for Jove’s story, we hope you will stay with us for the next chapter. We don’t know exactly what that chapter will look like yet. But we know that it will be fuelled by the same thing that ignited this company seventeen years ago: a belief that extraordinary theatre can be made here, with extraordinary people, for extraordinary audiences. We believe that more strongly than ever.
Thank you for seventeen very special outdoor seasons. I have tried to greet every one of you at the gate in that time. I cannot wait to do so again in better circumstances and in more magical places.
We’re thrilled that Merrigong Theatre Company have invited us back to perform at Theatre Under the Stars next year, from February 17 to 27. We encourage you, our loyal audience, to make the trip to down to Wollongong, where you’ll get to experience a brand new production of The Tempest, created especially for this event. With enormous gratitude,
Damien and the Sport for Jove team.
To learn more about Sport For Jove’s 2027 programs, visit the website.
Website: https://www.sportforjove.com.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/sportforjove/
Photo credits: The Comedy of Errors, images by Grant Leslie.
Leave a Reply