BUILD UP - bold, urgent & relevant

BUILD UP 2026

Our flagship New Work development program BUILD UP has two exciting projects supported in 2026.

Our flagship New Work initiative, BUILD UP supports the development of performance work from a range of performance artforms and cultural practices, offering funding, time, space, and peer support from May – December each year.

Artists receive up to $10,000 worth of support towards the development of their work including cash, office and rehearsal space, dramaturgy, project mentoring, professional advice and advocacy.

This year’s successful Build Up artists will be working behind the scenes throughout the year to move their projects forward.

Tania Lieman
FUTURE REAL

FUTURE REAL is a new immersive sensory theatre work set in the basement of a futuristic recycling centre, where three workers and the audience must make sense of the waste left behind by the world above.

Funny, tactile, visually inventive and emotionally resonant, the work combines non-verbal dramaturgy, physical improvisation, object theatre, live interaction and spontaneous audience participation. Cardboard, plastic bottles, broken machines and mutant objects flood the space. What begins as routine labour transforms into chaos, shared play, tenderness and collective care.

The audience are not observers. They become co-workers, co-players and co-authors of the experience.

Ryanna Clayton
Hectogram (Working Title)

Hectogram (Working Title) is an intergenerational play that investigates inherited suffering through the maternal line. Grandmother—mother—daughter.

It will explore why women don’t communicate knowledge such as; what’s a normal period like? What’s an STI? Why does my vagina itch? Why don’t I love my baby straight away? Why can’t I stop sweating? Why am I outrageously angry at the dog barking?

Chronic pain, period pain, post-partum mental health, sex education, perimenopause and menopause, let’s not forget matresence. These are all things we should learn about from our mothers, right? Well, what if our mothers didn’t learn about it from their mothers? And their mothers didn’t learn about it from their mothers. And their mothers didn’t learn about it from their mothers. Round and round we go…until suddenly we’re back in the Stone Ages and two Cave-Bitches are grunting at each other about what they’re making for dinner, but not one snort about their heavy periods or hot flashes. Jeez, maybe that’s part of the play.

This project intertwines invisible illness, ambiguous loss, body politics, medical misogyny and motherhood (the complexity of wanting it, hating it, chasing it and rejecting it). Yes, it’s a lot. But hey, this is the reality of womanhood, navigating these realities concurrently, quietly and all at once, while still meeting social expectations.