Malthouse Theatre is at once a treasured building, a theatre company, a creative site and an engine for change.

It is also the imaginative expression of a committed team of artmakers reaching out to an even larger number of local, national and international artists. All are dedicated to an ongoing conversation with audiences of exciting diversity and character.

This conversation chooses contemporary theatre as its vehicle: a compelling annual program of adventurous, multi-disciplinary work inspired by writers, directors, designers, choreographers, audio artists and performers. Here, the combined possibilities of all theatre arts are offered centre stage – for entertainment, for inspiration, and even for fun.

The quality, depth and longevity of this relationship between artists and audiences are at the heart of everything we do and so our creative aspirations are driven by a number of values:

Risk

Works created at Malthouse aim to test and extend the boundaries of our art form.

In order to be vital, cultural practice needs to be challenged and renewed. By acknowledging otherness and embracing experimentation as part of our day-to-day work, our assumptions are tested, our perspectives are expanded and our practice is rejuvenated. A celebration of difference, a desire to reach beyond our known limits and a willingness to venture into the thrilling unknown are how we define creative risk.

Rigour

Malthouse Theatre is committed to research, creative development and the ongoing examination of our practise.

A work of art is created in the time and space between the first idea and its realisation. Its potential for intelligence, passion and beauty is the measure of how ideas are tested, developed and supported over time. While we have permission to fail, we have the right to create the best conditions for achievement: our rigour builds the strongest platform from which to leap towards greatness.

Quest

Malthouse Theatre lives its values both onstage and off-stage: diversity, access and social inclusion are at the core of the world we want to represent and shape.

Theatre allows us to imagine and interact with the wondrous spectrum of human possibility: it allows us to picture a different world and know that it can be one of our own making. Through theatre, we participate in an ongoing quest to define who we are and what we value.

 

For a more in-depth exploration of Marion Potts’ artistic vision for the Malthouse Theatre please review her Rex Cramphorn Lecture (2010) below.