Theatre company's box office boost from bumper season
The company's 2024 financials released Thursday show this figure includes a big jump in operations revenue for the blockbuster year - including box office, touring, and royalties - to $37.7 million.
The overall revenue figures are the highest in the company's 45 year history, and an increase of just over $10 million from 2023.
More than half a million people saw an STC production during 2024, an increase of just over 260,000 on the previous year.
The box office figures were helped by a return season of RBG: Of Many, One starring Heather Mitchell as US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The show saw a paying audience of 28,660 across 56 performances at the Sydney Opera House and another 46,784 on tour.
The return run of Julia, starring Justine Clarke as former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saw similar success with an audience of 22,781 across a 49 show season and 41,122 on tour.
Kip Williams' adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook, which toured to London's West End for an Olivier Award-winning run of 101 performances, attracted total ticket sales of 77,273.
On Monday, the Succession star also won a Tony Award for best leading actress, for the play's hit run on Broadway.
Despite the international success, the company posted an overall deficit of $565,759 for 2024 - but this was an improvement on 2023 losses of $1.8 million.
The deficit was due in part to a hike in production costs, stagnant government funding, and a drop of about $1 million in philanthropic donations to $3.5 million, the company said.
Artistic Director Kip Williams left the State Theatre Company in October 2024 and has been replaced by former State Theatre Company of South Australia artistic director Mitchell Butel.
The company received $2.6 million in funding from Creative Australia and $570,000 from Create NSW.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
3 days ago
- Perth Now
Tulisa's dad has died
Tulisa's dad has died. The N-Dubz star has taken to Instagram to announce the loss of her father Steve Contostavlos - who went by the name of Plato - but she didn't share any details as to when the Mungo Jerry keyboardist had passed away. Sharing a childhood photo of herself and her dad, Tulisa wrote on Tuesday (01.07.25): "Love you pops, rest in peace. Forever my father's daughter." Her cousin and N-Dubz bandmate Dappy had also shared a video of himself with his uncle, alongside a white dove emoji. When Tulisa commented on the post with a broken heart emoji, he replied: "I'm so sorry T." The former X Factor Judge previously revealed how her dad helped her develop her passion for music at a young age. She told Ferne Cotton on her Happy Place podcast: "My dad had a little studio in Dollis Hill and he used to bring me there sometimes when he was working. He put me on the mic at the age of five. I was singing Little Mermaid. "I just knew there was nothing else I felt passionate about." And the Number One hitmaker previously explained she and her dad were more "friends" than sharing a typical father/daughter relationship. She told Paul C Brunson on his We Need To Talk podcast: "Me and my dad's relationship has not been a conventional one. "I would say me and my dad now we're just more friends that kind of have an understanding of one another." In the same interview, Tylisa told how she became "dependent" on prescription drugs after self-medicating with sleeping pills to "numb the pain" after her dog got cancer, but she feared she was "going to die" after she tried to quit. She said: "I was dependent without knowing... I just went cold turkey for five days and I ended up in hospital because I didn't know, but my body had become dependent on it. "I felt like I was having a heart attack. I had pains in my chest.... I just literally felt like I was going to die. "Once I overcame that in January, I didn't know how much I had been affected by it and I started to feel alive again. "I started to feel me, as a human. I was like, 'Oh my god, this is reality'. I couldn't determine anymore what was real and what wasn't in terms of my anxiety, my depression. "I didn't know what was what. Then it takes so long for your body to get back to normal again and for your nervous system to recover."
7NEWS
4 days ago
- 7NEWS
Jimmy Barnes opens up about terrifying health scare: ‘If we have nine lives, I've used up at least seven'
If a near-death experience re-defines a person's life, rock music legend Jimmy Barnes has had multiple re-definitions. He's survived years of drug and alcohol addiction, countless health emergencies, and the open-heart surgery (his second) he endured 18 months ago. Barnes has famously stared death in the face and won. Again and again. 'I've confronted death a few times,' he laughed. 'But normally it's sort of self-inflicted.' 'If we have nine lives, I've used up at least seven.' Now the 69-year-old swears he will treat his final two with far more respect. Barnes has taken time out of his busy concert schedule to speak with 7News in an exclusive backstage interview before the Sydney show. He's nearing the end of his sell-out 'Defiant Tour' – his first solo tour since that near-death moment in December 2023. The man who could be described as the heart of Australian rock and roll, had suffered a savage bacterial infection of the heart. It came after complications from a hip replacement. Barnes has just about toured more hospital wards than concert venues in those 18 months – and he was glad to back on stage. And the Sydney gig was special: in the audience are the medical team from St Vincent's Hospital that saved his life. 'They're coming along to see how their little handiwork went,' he laughs. 'They saved my life. So, you know, I'm forever grateful.' So are his fans. Defiant shot to the top of the ARIA charts this month, his 16th Number One album. His publicity team says that's two more Number Ones than The Beatles, and three more than Taylor Swift. 'How lucky am I? It's extraordinary, isn't it? I don't take it for granted,' he said. 'When I think that, you know, joining Cold Chisel 50 odd years ago, 16-years-old and thinking, will we make a living? How long will the band be going? And to be doing this this long afterwards, and we're still having people turn up. It's a blessed life.' His life now is in a very different place to that teenager's but it's still driven by the same dream: to make music. But in December 2023, he and his wife genuinely believed that run of luck had come to its end. 'I literally turned to Jane and said, 'I think this might be it. I think it might have caught me finally'.' He revealed that he actually made preparations for the worst. 'I did do a lot of that,' he said. And as he lay in his hospital bed, he was writing music with a message that held the hint of a farewell. 'I've sort of changed the way I wrote the songs I wrote,' he admitted. 'And I'm letting everybody I know that I love them, know that I've had the best life, you know.' Surviving that has changed everything about his life. 'Well, I'm healthier'' he says. 'If I want to enjoy my family and the life that I've built and I want to continue to make music and be relevant and bring joy to people, I've got to stay fit, I've got to be healthy, I've got to be focused.' 'These days, I appreciate every single day, every step I take.' He still performs at 110 per cent and 120 decibels. His face looks ready to explode and he belts the lyrics to the back of the hall in that traditional 'Barnestorming' way. And he refuses to change or slow the pace. 'It's like having primal therapy every night. Your pain, your fears, your love, your anger - all in an hour and a half on stage - and you can walk away and say, 'I'm okay now'.' His next major milestone will be his 70th birthday next April. Any advice for those of us coming after him? 'I think you can always get better,' he says. 'I honestly believe the more focused I am, the more I look after myself, the more I open up to the people around me and listen to them, the better I get.' He insists he's heading into the best years of his life – as a husband, father, grandfather and musician. 'I think I'll be performing until I drop. Defiant,' he declares. 'I am defiant.'
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Evonne Goolagong Cawley comes face to face with her past, and future in actor Lila McGuire
Goolagong Cawley also recounted her famous 1971 Wimbledon victory as a 19-year-old against reigning champion Margaret Court in a 6-4, 6-1 win. She noted Court was playing below her best. 'I was thinking, 'Oh, she really didn't play that well.' Then I found out she was pregnant. And I've thanked [Court's husband] Barry since.' Attendees at Melbourne's Plaza Ballroom on Saturday night included other Indigenous athletes Lydia Williams, a former Matildas player, and Olympian Kyle Vander-Kuyp. Also spotted were actor Mia Pimentel and her partner, Indigenous reality star Brooke Blurton, a former star of The Bachelorette who has just published a young adult fiction novel with Melanie Saward titled A Good Kind of Trouble. Marton Csokas as coach Vic Edwards and Lila McGuire as Evonne Goolagong on the set of the ABC TV miniseries Goolagong. Credit: Ben King Later, after a tennis-ball-styled dessert, the couple along with Indigenous presenter Megan Waters tore up the dance floor with octogenarian Indigenous elder Aunty Pam Pedersen. Also on hand were chief executive of the Australian Industry Group Innes Willox and wife Jane, John and Rasa Bertrand and Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin. Spirited bidding by Danny Wallace, serial buyer of 11 properties on reality show The Block , helped to raise $100,000 on the night. Opening night parents Spotted (proud mumma edition): Governor-General Sam Mostyn and her husband, barrister Simeon Beckett, attending the return production of Julia , the play about Australia's 27th prime minister, Julia Gillard. Justine Clarke (left) and Lotte Beckett star in the return season of the play Julia. Credit: Instagram The Sydney Theatre Company and Canberra Theatre Centre production has already wowed audiences in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide and this column has already chronicled the real Julia's attendance at the play, written by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Sarah Goodes. Sam Mostyn and her daughter Lotte Beckett pictured at the opening of a dinosaur exhibition in 2008 Credit: Sun Herald But we weren't aware the GG's keen interest in the play was personal – until now. Mostyn's daughter, actor Lotte Beckett, is a performer in the play, selected after a rigorous audition process for the show, which chronicles Gillard's life and times, culminating with her famous 'I Will Not' feminist cris de coeur in the House of Representatives. After the opening night of the return season at the Arts Centre, Melbourne on Thursday night, Beckett took to social media to thank 'beautiful friends, brilliant agents, iconic mentors and wonderful parents'. 'When I was little I used to dress up in red lipstick to go and see Sydney Theatre Company shows, and now I get to dance (literally) on the Playhouse stage every night. I get nervous before I go on, and then when I'm out there everything feels calm and right,' Beckett posted on Instagram. The governor-general told us: 'Simeon and I have not missed an opening night of our daughter's acting career. It was a special night with an astonishing performance by Justine Clarke, and we were so proud to see Lotte's wonderful debut with STC.' End of an era A major shifting of the tectonic plates that make up the earth's media-legal-defamation-judicial crust: MinterEllison partner Peter Bartlett is retiring today. Well, sort of. Bartlett who has been a partner at Minters for a record-breaking 51 years, will take up a new advisory role at the firm, becoming a 'partner emeritus'. Peter Bartlett is retiring after 51 years as a partner. Credit: Eamon Gallagher 'I will be mentoring and assisting the younger partners, especially in the media area,' Bartlett, 77, told this column, which has made use of his pre-publication advice on numerous occasions. 'I will be keeping an eye on the strategic decisions on all the files that I have been very active with, including Ben Roberts-Smith.' Former soldier Roberts-Smith, who lost his appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court against a landmark Federal Court ruling that he had committed war crimes, has sought special leave to appeal to the High Court. The court is considering the matter. As we reported last year, Bartlett has five children and 12 grandchildren, and his family has been encouraging him to retire for 15 years. Loading He has worked on some of the biggest legal cases in Australian history, involving Kerry Packer, Abe Saffron, Mick Gatto, Tony Madafferi, Justice Lionel Murphy, Robert Trimbole, Christopher Dale Flannery, Dr Geoffrey Edelsten and Roger Rogerson. He also acted for the widow of Donald McKay in the special inquiry into McKay's murder. He was admitted to practice in 1973, and in 1974 was made a partner at the law firm that is now MinterEllison, where he has worked with some 19 editors of The Age . Bartlett will continue to be chair of the membership committee of the International Bar Association, so there will be an opportunity to partake in a rigorous international calendar of conferences and events. 'I have had an enjoyable career being challenged by some of the best lawyers in the country and have acted in some of the largest media-related cases this country has ever seen, and now as maybe Gough Whitlam said, 'It's time … to slow down.''
