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Creative Futures Fund Investment

Merrigong Theatre Company has been selected as one of a handful of recipients that will receive major backing from Creative Australia’s inaugural $7.8M Creative Futures Fund investment. The funding is to create a new theatre adaptation of Catherine McKinnon’s Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted novel, Storyland. Storyland is one of just 20 projects selected from 283 expressions of interest nationally, and one of just six works of national significance funded for public delivery by the Creative Futures Fund.

As one of the nations’ most prolific regional producing companies, this funding is both an honour for Merrigong and an incredible development opportunity for our company, our artists and our community. The scale of funding, and the epic nature of the project being undertaken, will result in the largest theatrical work ever made by Merrigong, and the largest and most important professional theatre work to have been created in our region. It will be delivered in partnership with other key organisations locally and in Sydney.

“All of us at Merrigong Theatre Company are incredibly excited at the prospect of bringing to life this innovative, outdoor stage adaptation of Catherine McKinnon’s extraordinary novel Storyland. To be able to create a work of national significance on this scale on Country for the people of the Illawarra, and to bring people to this region to experience it, is a potentially transformative project for both artists and community. I view this Creative Futures Fund grant as hard-earned recognition of the incredible richness of regional theatre-making in this country, and of the artistic quality now being achieved by regional companies like us.”

– Simon Hinton, Artistic Director / CEO.

About Storyland

Storyland by Catherine McKinnon and Aunty Barbara Nicholson is an epic, uniquely Australian work that will be presented ‘on Country’ at the foot of the Illawarra escarpment as part of Merrigong’s 2027 Season, in partnership with key local and Sydney institutions.

This large-scale, outdoor adaptation of McKinnon’s Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted novel, directed by Leland Kean, tells five interconnected First Nations and multi-cultural stories charting the relationship between people and land in the Illawarra from European ‘first contact’ in 1796 to 2717 in the future.

Audiences from across the nation can begin their Storyland adventure listening to a special audio prologue as they travel to Wollongong (just over an hour from Sydney by train) to experience this powerful and immersive theatrical event on Dharawal Country.

Read Creative Australia’s full press release here.

Find out more about the Creative Futures Fund here.

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