Big 2015 season stuffs GPAC’s theatre calendar

AN EXCITING variety of Australian and international theatre will come to Geelong next year, according to the city’s leading performance arts venue.
Geelong Performing Arts Centre unveiled the line-up for its 2015 Deakin University Theatre Season this week, giving patrons a glimpse of the “extraordinary calibre of theatrical talent” coming next year.
Theatre figures including award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster Casey Bennetto and actors Noni Hazlehurst and Maria Mercedes helped launch the 2015 season.
GPAC general manager Jill Smith said she was excited to present a theatre season “bursting with quality international talent and truly Australian stories”.
“Increasingly we are approached directly to ensure an extended life for premiere productions. This means GPAC is often the only theatre in Victoria to present these works from our major theatre companies,” Ms Smith said.
“In 2015 not only will we have a great theatre season but also very special Geelong-only seasons. It is a season of icons and legends as well as exciting new stories.”
The season will include Australian-only performances of an English production of Hamlet as it spends two years touring the world.
Ms Smith said some shows were tightly squeezed into the GPAC calendar but they were “simply too good to refuse”.
“How could we decline an opportunity to be the only venue in Australia to present the iconic Shakespeare’s Globe with Hamlet, to present the only Victorian performances of Storm Boy and bring the New Zealand Dance Company to Geelong for the first time with Rotunda?”