This theatre closed its doors for a year due to funding. Now they’re back

Free coffee awaits audiences as La Mama Theatre readies to reopen in 2026. “Everyone said we should charge for it – the margin on coffee is one of the highest around – but I held firm,” says chief executive and artistic director Caitlin Dullard.

It’s a move that aligns with La Mama’s communitarian spirit. The cherished stalwart of Melbourne’s indie theatre scene was founded by Betty Burstall in 1967, modelled on (and named after) the “coffeehouse theatre” she had witnessed in New York.

The venue closed its doors to public performance this year for the first time in its history, after missing out twice on four-year operational funding from the federal government – in 2020 and in 2024.

“It was depressing,” says Dullard. “We received quite a lot of money during the pandemic. Those grants were tied, unfortunately … we had no discretion to squirrel [the emergency funding] away for future needs.”

Creative Australia responded in November 2024 with a pilot program splitting $3,880,000 in two-year operational funding between 12 arts companies from the small to medium sector (La Mama’s share is $175,000 a year over two years), but the decision had already been made to shutter the theatre, and Dullard has no regrets.

The hiatus has given the board of La Mama time to accept the need for supplementary sources of funding, and to draft a statement on artistic freedom to ensure that process never undermines La Mama’s core values.

The theatre hasn’t been idle. It held 88 artistic residencies over 2025, and they have borne immediate creative fruit, with several works being programmed in the 2026 season.

Dullard has been busy too. As a judge on the Green Room Awards panel this year, she’s seen a lot of indie theatre from the companies and venues left standing.

“I got the chance to check out their front of house, their production support, their publicity, everything,” she says. “And I’m not going to shit on other companies, but La Mama does it better.”

The La Mama model, with its generous support and box office for artists, will remain uncompromised, and the 2026 program has been revamped into three sections.

La Mama Presents offers eight new works from February to May. It’s a case of Noh news is good news for audiences: first cab off the rank is set to be Maki Morita’s 月を見る夜 Moongazing, a radical fusion of the digital and the spiritual inspired by a centuries-old tradition of Japanese masked performance.

Other highlights include the final instalment in Glenn Shea’s three-decade-long project An Indigenous Trilogy, the revolutionary satire Saints from Elbow Room, and a feminist black comedy from Megan Twycross, Stuck, to be directed by Susie Dee.

The development season Play runs from June to August. It’s a souped-up rebrand of La Mama Explorations with a renewed focus on testing new work and intensives for mid-career writers.

And although La Mama will no longer stage shows as part of Midsumma or the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Partnerships emphasises collaborations from September to December, with events such as a bespoke Melbourne Festival of Puppetry, and the sprawling indie behemoth of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

La Mama’s reopening will be a relief for theatregoers, who can expect a welcoming atmosphere (and a free cuppa) at a vital institution, refreshed in its commitment to the future of new Australian work for the stage.

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