At a lively event onstage at the Causeway Hall in Kingston, ACT Hub unveiled an ambitious season of 11 productions and a mini-festival of plays on Thursday evening.

Theatre followers will recall that in April 2022, the hall became home to Everyman Theatre, Chaika Theatre and Free-Rain Theatre Company, coming together as an independent performance team that has quickly come to prominence in the local theatre scene.

The 2025 line-up includes a new Australian family drama, a Lorca classic, ACT Hub’s first Shakespeare, a co-production and return seasons of two former successes for Everyman Theatre.

Next year will also see the introduction of the inaugural Hub Fest, which will offer in-kind support to produce three different productions of Australian works during February.

Opening in January is a co-production between ACT Hub and Lachlan Herring’s new Red Herring Theatre Company. Mojo by Jez Butterworth is a thriller which takes a look at the amphetamine-fuelled London rock scene of the 1950s. That will be directed by Lachlan Houen, also on Canberra Rep’s list of directors for the year.

In March, Chaika Theatre’s Karen Vickery will stage Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba in an adaption by Vickery and Andrea Garcia , while in May, Everyman Theatre presents the Irish romantic drama, If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could, in which two boys are stuck on a roof together. Joel Horwood, also on Rep’s line-up, is the director.

Noel Coward’s Present Laughter runs in June, directed by Vickery and billed as a ridiculous night at the theatre, before Free-Rain Theatre kicks off the year in late June with Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, directed by Cate Clelland.

Caitlin Baker, who stepped in this year to direct Chaika’s Seagull, will stage Julius Caesar from July to August and threatens to bring this political play “kicking and screaming into the 21st century.”

Staged under the broader ACT Hub banner in in late August will be Every Lovely Terrible Thing, a new Australian play that examines why families stay together, directed by Houen.

Introducing an entirely different mood, Free-Rain Theatre will present the popular farce Lend Me A Tenor in September, then in October, also with entertainment in mind, Everyman Theatre will revive the off-Broadway hit Musical of Musicals (the Musical!), which it successfully staged in 2009 and 2013, before ACT Hub was even thought of. Former cast member Hannah Ley will return from the UK for the show.

Anne Somes directs, Peter Shaffer’s Equus in November, in which a psychiatrist treats a terrified boy who has committed a crime against six horses.

Hand to God, a blasphemous black comedy with puppets and first staged by Everyman in ACT Hub’s first year, returns to usher in the silly season with what the company is calling “a demonic bang”.