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Artwork for Seventeen
Artwork for Seventeen
Artwork for Seventeen
Artwork for Seventeen
Artwork for Seventeen
Seventeen

15 Jan — 17 Feb 2024

Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

Set against a soundtrack of infectious bangers, Australian playwright Matthew Whittet’s playful yet moving exploration of adolescence traces the drama of growing up and letting go.

Approx. 1 hour 35 minutes with no interval

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This is rated 4 out of 5 stars

‘A spirited, elegiac meditation on youth.’

The Guardian
This is rated 4 out of 5 stars

‘Showcases some of Australia’s finest theatre veterans.’

Limelight
This is rated 4 out of 5 stars

‘Terrific performance across the board.’

Time Out

ABOUT THE SHOW

School’s out. Forever.

On the edge of adulthood, six teenagers gather at a local park to celebrate a rite of passage in nearly every young person’s life: the final day of school.

Through wild drinking, carefree dancing, forbidden pashes and jaw-dropping confessions, what begins as a party to mark the beginning of the rest of their lives becomes a portrait of the complexities of youth.

Set against a soundtrack of infectious bangers and played out on a visually stunning 11m revolving playground, Australian playwright Matthew Whittet’s playful yet moving exploration of adolescence traces the drama of growing up and letting go.

With an ensemble cast of legendary stars of the stage and screen who have been there and done that, Seventeen is a poignant reminder of the inner teen within all of us.

Accessibility

  • Wheelchair Accessible

  • Hearing Assistance

  • Audio Described

  • Tactile Tour

  • Open Captioning

  • Closed Captioning

  • Auslan Interpreted

Performance Type Performance Date(s)
Audio Described
by Vision Australia 		Saturday 3 February at 2pm
Tuesday 6 February at 6.30pm
Tactile Tour
at venue 		Saturday 3 February at 2pm (Tactile tour commences at 1pm)
Open Captioning
via screen 		Saturday 10 February at 2pm
Closed Captioning
via GoTheatrical App 		Saturday 10 February at 2pm
Auslan Interpreted
by Auslan Stage Left 		Tuesday 13 February at 6.30pm
Fiona-Choi.jpg

Fiona Choi

Lizzy

For Melbourne Theatre Company Fiona has appeared in Laurinda, Torch the Place, Golden Shield, The Lady in The Van and Metamorphoses. A graduate of WAAPA, Fiona has also appeared in Single Asian Female (State Theatre Company South Australia) and Plainsong (Black Swan). Musical theatre highlights include Dragon Lady: The Many Lives & Deaths of Anna May Wong (Adelaide Cabaret Festival); Into The Woods (Watch This); RENT (Cameron Mackintosh); Mamma Mia! (Littlestar/Dainty); and countless Off-Broadway premieres.  Best known for her role as Jenny Law in Benjamin Law’s award-winning SBS comedy The Family Law (AACTA nomination, Best Performance in a Television Comedy), other recent television highlights include Australian Epic, Utopia, Mustangs FC, The Letdown, Harrow, Get Krack!n and Back In Very Small Business (ABC TV); Jones Family Christmas (Stan); Wentworth (Foxtel); My Life is Murder (Channel 10) and True Story with Hamish & Andy (Nine Network).  Upcoming projects include Population 11 (Stan) and White Fever (ABC TV).

Current as of January 2024. 

Robert Menzies

Robert Menzies

Tom

Robert Menzies returns to Melbourne Theatre Company after appearing in Così, Macbeth, The Weir, The Cherry Orchard, Music, Queen Lear, Hamlet, Life Without Me and August: Osage Country. He has also appeared in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare); Ghosts, A Christmas Carol, The Wild Duck, The End, The Threepenny Opera, Measure for Measure (Belvoir); Cosi, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Golden Age, Macbeth, Fury, Gross Und Klein, War of the Roses, Reunion/ A Kind of Alaska, Julius Caesar, Seneca’s Oedipus (Sydney Theatre Company); The Government Inspector and Knives in Hens (Malthouse). Robert has also appeared in numerous films including The Rooster, Cactus, Force of Destiny, Canopy, Home, Siam Sunset, Three Dollars, Lamb, Bliss and Heatwave. His television credits include The Newsreader, Glitch, The Beautiful Lie, Monash & the Anzac Legend, My Brother Jack and 3 Acts of Murder.

Current as of January 2024. 

Genevieve Picot

Genevieve Picot

Emilia

Genevieve Picot’s many theatre credits for Melbourne Theatre Company include Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Arcadia, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Antigone. Some of her other stage appearances include Small Metal Objects (Back To Back Theatre; Australian, European and American Tours), The Great Man (Sydney Theatre Company); Wild Honey (State Theatre Company South Australia); Tales from the Vienna Woods (Nimrod Theatre); The Book of Everything and The Great Fire (Belvoir); The Aspirations of Daise Morrow (Brink Productions); and Emilia (Essential Theatre). Genevieve’s film credits include The Dressmaker, Muriel’s Wedding, Proof, Bread and Roses, Undercover and Ali’s Wedding. Her television credits include Medivac, Inside Running, A Descant for Gossips Timeless Land, The Sullivans, Rosehaven (season three), The Hunting, and Jack Irish (season three). Genevieve received the 1994 New Zealand Film Festival Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film for Bread and Roses.

Current as of January 2024. 

Richard Piper

Richard Piper

Mike

Seventeen is Richard Piper’s 41st production with Melbourne Theatre Company, where his credits also include As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Born Yesterday, Ghosts, Music, The Gift, Drowsy Chaperone, Rockabye, Entertaining Mr Sloane, Dumb Show, The Daylight Atheist, Betrayal, Man the Balloon and Life After George. Other theatre credits include The Black Rider, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Malthouse Theatre); The Secret River, Gross und Klein, Great Expectations, Moby Dick (Sydney Theatre Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Wars of the Roses, Henry V, Henry IV (Bell Shakespeare); Moby Dick, Marat Sade, The Comedy of Errors, Restoration, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, What the Butler Saw (STCSA); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing (Australian Shakespeare Company). Musical theatre: Billy Elliot, Come From Away. His screen work includes Satisfaction, Correlli, Pirates of the Caribbean, Savage River, The Newsreader and Gold Diggers.

Current as of January 2024. 

Pamela Rabe

Pamela Rabe

Jess

Pamela Rabe has appeared in more than forty Melbourne Theatre Company productions including The Children, The Cherry Orchard, Dinner, The Season at Sarsaparilla, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Little Night Music, Private Lives, A Room of One’s Own, Cosi, Lost in Yonkers, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, The Heidi Chronicles, As You Like It and Top Girls. She has worked extensively on stages, screens and concert halls around the country and internationally. She has recently returned from a major European tour, including seasons at The National (UK) and Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe (Paris), of Alexander Zeldin’s play The Confessions. Pamela also directs regularly, including Photograph 51, Jumpy, Solomon and Marion, In the Next Room and Elling for Melbourne Theatre Company. She has received many awards for her theatre, film and television work, and recently was recognised as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her distinguished services to the Arts.

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for George Shevtsov

George Shevtsov

Ronny

George Shevtsov is a Perth based actor making his debut with Melbourne Theatre Company.  Most recently he appeared in Mary Stuart for Perth Festival 2022. George has performed with most major theatre companies in Australia and worked with renowned international and Australian directors including Steven Berkoff and George Ogilvie. Recent television credits include Series 3 of Mystery Road and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Film credits include the George Miller directed film Three Thousand Years of Longing in 2022, and he will be seen in the 2024 Mad Max film, Furiosa. He is best known for his role as Ken Sherry in Shirley Barrett’s Love Serenade, which won the Camera D’or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.  He played The Stranger in the independent film Crawl, which won awards on the international horror film circuit including Best Film at Screamfest in Los Angeles 2012.  He also appeared with Adrian Brody in Backtrack released in 2015.

Current as of January 2024. 

Matthew Whittet

Matthew Whittet

Writer

Matthew Whittet is a writer, actor and dramaturg who has worked extensively in theatre, film and television for the past 26 years. As a writer his plays are performed both nationally and internationally. They include Big Bad Wolf (Melbourne Theatre Company and Windmill Theatre Co); We Are The Mutable (Queensland Theatre); Kindness (NIDA); Seventeen (Lyric Hammersmith and Belvoir); Girl Asleep (Windmill Theatre Co and Belvoir); Cinderella, Old Man, Silver (Belvoir); School Dance, Fugitive (Windmill Theatre Co, Adelaide Festival and Sydney Theatre Company). For television he recently wrote for Netflix’s Heartbreak High. He also wrote the award-winning feature film adaptation of Girl Asleep, which debuted at the Adelaide Film Festival and went on to open the 2016 Generation 14 Plus Program at the Berlin International Film Festival. Matthew was among the seven Sidney Myer Creative Fellows chosen in 2012 and is a proud member of both the AWG and MEAA.

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for Matt Edgerton

Matt Edgerton

Director

Matt Edgerton is an Australian theatre director, dramaturg and actor working with contemporary and classical texts across a range of forms, styles and scales, cross-cultural collaborations and projects promoting social development in communities. Matt has directed shows for Black Swan, Barking Gecko, Bell Shakespeare, Belvoir St Theatre, Monkey Baa, Performing Lines, Poetry In Action, Shaman Productions, Sport For Jove, The Last Great Hunt, and WAAPA, touring widely to major festivals in Australia and overseas, winning PAWA, AWGIE, Glug and Helpmann awards. As an actor Matt has a twenty-year career performing classical and contemporary work around the country on stage, screen and radio. Matt has written plays for Poetry In Action and Bell Shakespeare, seen by over a million young people. Matt spent four years as Artistic Director at Barking Gecko, three years as a Resident Artist at Bell Shakespeare and one year filling in as Head of New Work at Melbourne Theatre Company. He trained as an actor at WAAPA and is a Winston Churchill Fellow.

Current as of January 2024. 

Christina Smith

Christina Smith

Set & Costume Designer

Christina Smith’s work has been seen at Melbourne Theatre Company for the last 20 years, with shows as a set and costume designer on The Heartbreak Choir, Berlin, A View from the Bridge, The Architect, Gloria, The Odd Couple, Elling, National Interest, The Seed, Clybourne Park, Rising Water, A Behanding in Spokane, Boston Marriage, The Swimming Club, Blackbird, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Clean House, Dumb Show, Things We Do For Love, The Daylight Atheist, Honour and Cloud Nine; as Costume Designer on Realism, Humble Boy, Proof, Sweet Bird of Youth and Three Days of Rain; and as Set Designer on Jacky, Hayfever and Boy Gets Girl. Other companies she has designed for include Seattle Opera, NZ Opera, Victorian Opera, Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre, Black Swan State Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir. She is a lecturer in Design for Live Performance at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Current as of January 2024. 

Paul-Jackson.jpg

Paul Jackson

Lighting Designer

Paul Jackson’s lighting designs with Melbourne Theatre Company include Escaped Alone and What If If Only, Sunday, Cyrano, The Sound Inside, The Truth, Home, I’m Darling, Arbus and West, The Children, Gloria, Hay Fever, Di and Viv and Rose, Three Little Words, Endgame, Miss Julie, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Double Indemnity, The Ghost Writer, Ghosts, Dinner, Frozen, The Speechmaker, Enlightenment, Madagascar and Private Lives; and for Sydney Theatre Company include Do Not Go Gentle, The Lifespan of a Fact, Death of a Salesman, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, No Pay? No Way!, Mary Stuart, True West and The Mysteries. He has also designed for The Australian Ballet, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Berlin Staatsballett, West Australian Ballet, Queensland Ballet, Chunky Move, Victorian Opera, West Australian Opera, Queensland Opera, Bell Shakespeare, Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir, Queensland Theatre, Circa and Chamber Made Opera. He has lectured in design at the University of Melbourne, RMIT University and VCA. Paul has won a Helpmann Award, seven Green Room Awards, two Sydney Theatre Awards, five Australian Production Design Guild Awards and a Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland. In 2017, he received an Australia Council of the Arts Fellowship.

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for Joe Paradise Lui

Joe Paradise Lui

Composer & Sound Designer

Joe Paradise Lui has previously worked for Melbourne Theatre Company on Bernhardt/Hamlet and Is God Is. Joe is a submerging artist and undisputed winner of the 2013 Spirit of the Fringe award. He has won no awards since. Joe is a founding member of Renegade Productions. Within its aegis Joe creates experimental theatre and performance works. Joe’s most recent professional directing work was Unsung Heroes (Black Swan State Theatre Company) and most recent independent directing work was The Ugly and Salome Delta (The Blue Room Theatre). Joe is also a writer, and a sound and lighting designer. Recent sound design credits include Barracking for the Umpire (Black Swan State Theatre Company), and recent writing and lighting design credits include Enlightenment (Elbow Room).

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for Vincent Crowley

Vincent Crowley

Movement Director

Having trained as an actor, Vincent Crowley has spent much of his performance career working in Dance Theatre and Physical Theatre. He has worked in Australia, the US and Europe with companies and artists such as Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre, TanzTheater Basel, Salzburger Festwochen, Schauspiel Köln, Chunky Move, Force Majeur, The Victorian State Opera, and Spike Jonze on Where the Wild Things Are. His most recent performance was THIS (Rising Festival 2023). He is a founding member of both Splinter Group and Torque Show and has devised and co-created a number of dance/theatre works with these companies including Lawn, the recipient of multiple Green Room Awards, Intimacy, winner of the Australian Dance award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance and Madame for State Theatre Company South Australia.

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for Tom Willis

Tom Willis

Associate Lighting Designer

Artwork for Tasnim Hossain

Tasnim Hossain

Assistant Director

Tasnim Hossain is Resident Director at Melbourne Theatre Company, where she directed I Wanna Be Yours, assistant directed Bernhardt/Hamlet and Bloom, dramaturged for Cybec Electric 2023, and directed the First Stage 2022 readings. She co-directed and dramaturged Lost in Shanghai (CAAP/OzAsia Festival) and was assistant director on Banging Denmark (STC). Her production of Yellow Face (Dinosaurus Productions/KXT) was nominated for four 2021 Sydney Theatre Awards, winning Best Direction of an Independent Production. Other directing credits include How I Learned to Drive (NIDA); Sweat (VCA); and Rough Draft #49 – Garage Sale (STC). As a writer, she was co-recipient of the inaugural NSW Musical Theatre Fellowship (CreateNSW/Hayes Theatre Company) and her script Bombay Takeaway was shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Award. She received the 2022 Women’s Agenda Award for Emerging Leader in Arts and Entertainment and is a recent graduate of Theatre Network Australia’s Leadershift program.

Current as of January 2024. 

Artwork for Amy Cater

Amy Cater

Intimacy Coordinator

Learn more about Seventeen

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The Sumner

140 Southbank Boulevard

Southbank, Victoria 3006