Theatre company Black Swan’s Artistic Director, Kate Champion is set to head for new challenges at the end of the year, but she will be going out with a bang.
Kate has been responsible for bringing acclaimed West Australian novelist Tim Winton’s The Shepherd’s Hut to the Heath Ledger Theatre for its world premiere from May 9 to 31.
She already knew of director Matt Edgerton so soon after she arrived four years ago she met with him and discovered he was pursuing a stage adaptation of Tim Winton’s The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim McGarry (known for Boy Swallows Universe).
“I instantly knew that it was something I would be interested in programming. It’s been through various stages of development over the years and has taken a while to be ready for the stage and I think that’s not a bad thing because some of the best things develop over an extended period of time,” Kate says.
“I worked on the original Cloudstreet, probably Tim Winton’s most well-known stage adaptation and that was one of the most memorable experiences of my career. It was an extraordinary production. It took Australia to the world stage in an impactful way”.
“I’ve also directed another play of Tim’s “That Eye The Sky’, and so I’m familiar with his style and the revered position he holds as an author to WA, but of course also nationally and internationally. His writing is strikingly both poetic and colloquial. The haunting way he describes landscapes evoking elements of human psyche, it all lends itself so beautifully to theatrical interpretation.”
Kate brings this phase of her career to an end following an involvement in the arts over many decades”.
“I started dance classes when I was six years old. I had a career as a professional dancer, for 26 years.”
“Then I started a dance theatre company that engaged both actors and dancers in its original productions. This then led me into directing plays, unsurprisingly because I was always searching for the most theatrical version of dance theatre I could find! It felt like the natural progression.”
Kate was born in Sydney and went to the UK to work in the 90s.
She came to Perth seeking the next professional challenge. “I’ve lived in so many different places due my desire to work in the best possible companies and productions I could find. I also have a sister who’s lived here for 40 years and she was definitely a draw card”.
“But there are only a handful of state theatre companies in Australia that you can be the artistic director of which makes it a matter of timing as much as anything. This position became available at a time in my life when I felt completely prepared for this sort of job.”
So, what does Kate want to do after her role at Black Swan ends?
“People ask me this a lot. I will be 65 at the end of the year and I feel at this time I’d like to spend the next stage of my career making art more than managing a company. As much as I love helping create opportunities for emerging artists or for any artists to get their work up and I love working with other people on a lot of levels, but in the next part I’d love to go back to solely being an artist.”
But before she moves on Kate has the rest of the year to finish with Black Swan.
“We’ve just had a massive sellout season of RBG and Heather’s (Mitchell), also a close friend and surely one of the best actors in the country, so it’s been incredible to have her back.
In response to which shows Kate’s programmed or directed that have been her most memorable she says –
“It’s often the first play that you direct for a company as artistic director which is indelibly printed on your memory, and so Things I Know to be True by Andrew Bovell was a phenomenal experience for me here.”
“Dirty Birds was an original work by Mandy and Hayley McElhinney which I directed – another incredible experience. And then there was The Pool. A response to telling everyone ‘no we’re not going to do silk scarves representing water on stage, instead we’re going to put it in a real swimming pool! That was a very adventurous piece and I give credit to the staff at Black Swan for being so willing to go in that direction. We’re about to do a regional tour of that, which will be an exciting adventure”.
Another definite highlight has been “Raised in Big Spirit Country, an Aboriginal work from the Kimberley, from Broome specifically. This has been an ongoing collaboration with Naomi Pigram-Mitchell, who first worked with Black Swan when she was 16 years old on the production of Corrugation Road. A wonderful connection to the roots of Black Swan’s history and an on-going relationship with the next generation of Broome artists.
Kate says she sometimes feels Black Swan doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.
“Sometimes I feel frustrated for Black Swan because it’s a smallish company as far as state theatre companies go and yet it operates on the scale of a State Theatre company. I want it to reach further afield nationally. Having said that there’s also a very personal quality about the scale of Perth and our company and audiences which means you are you are less siloed in your separate ways of working and living.”
Tickets for Black Swan’s 2026 season are available at www.blackswantheatre.com.au.
