PLAYWRIGHT, director and producer Julian Hobba has, by and large, led a charmed life in the theatre and now he’s been announced as the next executive director of SA’s State Theatre Company.

He comes directly from the executive directorship of The Blue Room Theatre in Perth, a company dedicated to the development of new Australian plays which has just lost its Australia Council four-year funding after 20 years of support.

“It broke my heart,” Hobba lamented, but not so much as to interfere with his new job.

Hobba is very well-known in Canberra. He came to the ACT from Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne when he was appointed by Robyn Archer as a program manager for the Centenary of Canberra in 2013 and was recently described by Archer as “pragmatic and efficient, but highly creative at the same time… His sensibilities are at the heart of theatre”.

Hobba quickly established himself here with The Street Theatre’s staging of his adaptation of Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby” in 2014 and he worked with the Tuggeranong Arts Centre on its silver anniversary Moon Festival project.

He also established and became artistic director of Aspen Island Theatre Company to stage contemporary Australian theatre in Canberra and was behind the establishment of a pop-up classical Greek theatre designed by Ronan Moss, of Cox Architecture, during late November 2015.

In 2016 he wrote and directed a play set in Gungahlin, “The Slip Lane” and even wrote a short play called “The Skywhale – A Play for Ten Children”, staged as a reading at a Canberra Youth Theatre festival.

Hobba phoned us last week from the outskirts of Perth where, having had several flights cancelled, he was about to embark on a three-day, 2695-kilometre road journey from Perth to Adelaide.

There he would be expected to contact the local police, show them his letter of contract and go into immediate 14-day isolation before his new job in Adelaide starts on May 11.

“I’ll spend a bit of time getting introduced to the new staff at the State Theatre Company by Zoom, I guess… Then I’ll have to meet all the people, all the donors, the ArtsSA people and various others, but I hope it won’t be long before we’ll be meeting physically, too.”

Born in Bendigo while his mum was making her way home to Adelaide, 43-year-old Hobba grew up in SA’s Riverland region, then studied both at the University of Adelaide and as a journalism student at the UniSA.

He’d written his first play by age 21 and began production at age 25 encouraged by friends from Flinders University, before working in Melbourne and Canberra.

Keen to get back to his hometown, he says that one thing The Blue Room and the State Theatre Company have in common is a reputation for punching above their weight.

“And Adelaide is a real arts-loving kind of a city, so it gives you a bit of licence to do interesting stuff.”

Luckily, funding for the company is secure, as it is a statutory authority, although one, he stresses, which is very much dependent upon a casualised workforce when it comes to the creative people.

It’s an odd time to be taking up a new job. The COVID-19 crisis, he suspects, may offer staff the chance to reflect and reorganise things that needed developing.

“Either way, we are going to be impacted and there will be a dramatic social shift,” Hobba says.

“How far ahead would we be expected to re-program shows that were scheduled and which might have resulted in good box office? It might be that in six months [restrictions] may not be lifted, so it will be impossible to present larger shows… it may be that in 2021 we’ll see a lot of local programming and that’s not such a bad thing.”

Hobba’s new job is not an artistic one. An executive director used to be called a general manager, and the job crosses over into areas of long-term strategy linked in with creative visions and questions of philanthropy.

He’ll be joining artistic director of the year, Mitchell Butel, whom he met while working at the Malthouse and who says: “I’m thrilled to have by my side someone who I know will help navigate the waters ahead with skill and grace”.

For his part, Hobba describes Butel as “a generous actor with a great sense of comedy [and] a unique handle on organisational skills”.

He’s looking forward to going home (his mum still lives in the Riverland) where he’ll pick up on former friends from high school and he hopes to be involved in bringing theatre to the communities there.

“I really love Adelaide… most places I’ve lived in have great qualities, like Canberra and Perth, but Adelaide has come a long way – it’s a kind-of cool town.”

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