Mission

Subverse Theatre is a company that develops theatre-making for artists aiming to develop their most authentic creative process. Drawing upon acting and theatre-making techniques from Sandford Meisner, Viola Spolin and Mike Alfreds as well as philosophies around creativity from classic books from Steven Pressfield, Timothy Gallwey and Julia Cameron, Subverse aims to steward important currents of knowledge and technique.

Every artist can benefit from developing an embodied practice in a community setting and it is that setting that Subverse provides. The aim is to facilitate the artist’s journey and encourage full expression through the unshackled subconscious. Once there is an appropriate attention to craft, and a supportive space, for witnessing and validation, then the serious work of celebrating the joy of playfulness can flourish.

Current Show

"A contemporary, naturalistic comedy about the real world impacts of intergenerational inequality and prejudice."

A new comedy.

Written by Stuart Bruce and staging in early 2025. A two-act play a exploring the human cost of Australia’s cultural and political settings relating to intergenerational inequality. The rehearsal process will be heavily influenced by Meisner and Mike Alfreds methods of theatre-making.

Currently seeking expressions of interest for:

  • 6 X Actors (2f & 4m)
  • Assistant director
  • Production Manager/Stage Manager

Previous Work

About

Subverse Theatre was founded by Stuart Bruce.

His highlights include:

  • Acting: William Esper Studio  (NYC)
  • Music Theatre: Pink in Pink Floyd’s The Wall (Nuworks Theatre Australia)
  • Theatre: Hamlet in Hamlet (London and Stratford-Upon-Avon)
  • Music: Blues set Live @ Chess Records  (Chicago)
  • Composition: 10 Songs for Freak Show (Edinburgh Fringe)
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Get in Touch

We’d love to hear from you! Please fill out the form below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Loneliness​

A comedy developed during covid in between lockdowns, the story of four ordinary humans, struggling to find connection in a complex world where social anxiety is the norm and repressed traumas shape our everyday behaviour. The characters are like mirrors for us to acknowledge our traits that keep us from connection. Where does loneliness come from? It’s in our ordinary habits, fears, insecurities that we affirm and uphold, like armour, to help us get through life.

Rambling Pony​

Being “in the moment” is the most common refrain heard when seeking the truth of art and life. No one was more in the moment than the mercurial and often overlooked blues guitar legend and founder of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green. Rambling Pony is a study in the brutal power of truthfulness in art, it’s musical origins in the delta-blues underpinning all popular music and the journey of Peter’s life and music as a 20th century Icarus.

Told through the medium of visual and sound effects with life music, it’s a tribute show to a legend.

The Pickup Artist

A comedy, or more closely a tragedy, looking at the fraught process of overcoming isolation that is offered to the modern male through online subcultures. Three friends, each with different capabilities and neuroses, navigate a short course in pickup “artistry”. The goal posts shift, from seeking the merely physical to the obvious but unacknowledged need for real intimacy in connection. Follow their journey to discover the true price of programatising human connection.

Old Friends

What if you could reconnect with your old friend? You know the one. Time has separated you. Growing up, growing apart. What if for one afternoon, you could be together? Two characters have just such an afternoon. Their world’s returned, the clock wound back. A mutual acknowledgement of shared love and resigned grief. Lives intertwined and lives in parallel.

This economical two-hander is a elegy to friendship and the tribulations of fate.

The Sacrifice of Farinelli

A drama set in the 1700s baroque Italy, with countless parallels to contemporary decadence, composer Riccardo Broschi grapples with his brother’s transcendence in the world of music as the great Farinelli. A trinity of man, woman and youth, Farinelli engenders a fame that wouldn’t be seen again till Elvis. Striding the stages of Europe, a superstar wrought by artificial intervention in biology – castrated as a boy. Today our cultures amplifies the pursuit of fame through artifice, raging against our biology, and not attending to the price of losing track of ourselves until it is too late.

A full cast with chamber strings or backing tracks.