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Photo. credit: Chris Tomkins
Commentary (2026)
directed by Petra Kalive
State Theatre of South Australia
Commentary is a sharp, provocative play that interrogates the ethics of artmaking, accountability, and memory in an era of public reckoning. The story centres on Nick, played by Gyton Grantley (Underbelly, House Husbands), a once-promising filmmaker turned university lecturer, whose controversial debut feature Low is being resurrected for a retrospective screening at the local International Film Festival. The film, co-created with his former best friend Hamish (now disgraced and presumed dead), is dogged by allegations of abuse and exploitation linked to its production and content.
As Nick prepares a director’s commentary and public appearance, the past begins to resurface through a chorus of women — his student and lover Gen, his wife Mish, former muse Saskia, and a teenage girl named Frankie. Frankie’s re-emergence catalyses a chain of revelations, betrayals, and reckonings that culminate in Nick’s fall from professional and personal grace. The play’s narrative cleverly mirrors the fragmented form of a DVD commentary track — non-linear, reflexive, full of contradiction, omission, and performance.
Photo. credit: Claudio Raschella
The New #wetoo
A Brief Episode (2024)
directed by Stephen Nicolazzo
Melbourne Fringe
From the team that brought you the critically acclaimed 'End Of.' comes an all new singular show about the dangers of your dreams (possibly) coming true. Join our nameless protagonist (it's Ash) as he attempts the impossible – to find a place on Aussie TV for a mouthy middle-aged homosexual with too many opinions. Naturally, this quest takes him to Greece, birthplace of the Hero's Journey, where instead of finding structure... he loses it entirely.
What emerges is a vivid, surreal and surprising true story about wild dogs, moustaches, runaway Americans, hospitable Albanians, vapid Australians, pornographers, widows, hawks, hikers, hairdressers, slums, gangs, generous mothers and selfish little children.
As our hero is pulled between life and death, order and anarchy, fight or flight, you'll begin to wonder how any of us can face the outside world – or worse, ourselves.
Photo. credit: Griffin Simm
​“Flanders careens on an energetic monologue that folds in unbridled artistic passion, monstrous self-doubt spiked with dopamine hits of unbound self-assurance.” – TimeOut
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“Consistently funny, incisive work. It’s hard to imagine anyone portraying Flanders’ mid-career ennui as exquisitely as he does.” – Saturday Paper
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“A Brief Episode is a compelling story of personal ties, grief, the alchemy of writing - and the darkness that can lurk behind sunshine.” – Tim Richards
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"Clever, entertaining narrative comedy by a first-rate comedic writer and seasoned performer." – ArtsHub
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We Are Here
“This is Living is character-driven ensemble theatre from one of our great comedic writers. It is exciting to see a play that foregrounds women’s relationships, particularly post-menopausal women, as well as the friendships that emerge between gay men and women.” – Arts Hub
"Ash Flanders has crafted a densely layered offering, with no shortage of light and shade." – The Blurb​
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"It’s relatable, darkly funny and, most of all, real." – The Age
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"This is Living feels electric with lived-in truth." – Time Out
This Is Living (2023)
directed by Matthew Lutton
Malthouse Theatre
Falling apart can bring you together.
Check your emotional baggage at the door because this self-described gang of queers, singles, and divorcees is going on holiday. Hugh has organised a fabulous weekend away for his partner and their best girlfriends in Hepburn’s finest to escape a year from hell. But even deli meats, medicinal hydroponics and soaking in spring water can’t fix everything. Try as you might to float on the surface, life has a funny way of bubbling up—and over.
This semi-autobiographical play is the saltiest, sweetest, and most honest look at love and friendship you’ll see.
Because when shit hits the fan it’s your chosen family who’ll clean you up—once they’ve stopped laughing. So pack an overnighter and enjoy the only safe seat on a getaway you won’t want to get away from.
This Is Living!
Photo. credit: Kristin Gehradte
They Are Watching You
Shrapnel (2023/24)
written with Natalie Gamsu
directed by Stephen Nicolazzo
Photo. credit: Marija Ivkovic
“Her collection of stories kept the audience laughing or awed or shocked. And while it felt complete, it left me wanting more” – Theatre Matters
"An hour long monologue frosted with music. She was the festival's most potent performer." – The Sydney Morning Herald
When award winning performer Natalie Gamsu’s partner turned to her and said, “Darling, do you think you were a flamenco dancer in a past life?”, she decided that yes, she was. And this show was born.
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In SHRAPNEL, Gamsu searches for meaning through diabolically funny stories of tsuris – the Yiddish word for pain, eating her mother’s blood by mistake, psilocybin spiritual journeys into the past and of course, her shapeshifting days suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. There is everything from apartheid to zebras, underground nightclubs, bombings, meerkats, suicides and customer service arguments over tinned fruit.
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Combining poetic writing, ridiculous and heartbreaking personal stories, and the deep and haunting singing voice of one of Australia’s most gifted performers, SHRAPNEL is a celebration of Natalie Gamsu’s strange, beautiful, and fearless capacity to expose her eccentricities and uncanny life experiences with an audience..
We Are Here
★★★★★ "Discerning. Masterful. Brilliant" – Theatre People
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★★★★1/2 "“A gem of a performance. Fierce, funny and poignant" – Arts Hub
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★★★★ "Unmissable" – Sydney Morning Herald
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★★★★ "“Fleet in wit, cattily ironic in his observations, he’s a self-aware diva of the absurd, with a manic whim to plunge with theatrical flourish into gallows humour. You will find yourself cackling more than once.” – Limelight Magazine
“Shockingly honest. It’s careful and elegant, emphatic and rich. Vigorous and electrified.” – THE AUSTRALIAN
End Of. (2020/22)
directed by Stephen Nicolazzo
Griffin Theatre
There’s no crueler thing you can say to an actor than ‘Don’t quit your day job’. Fortunately, thanks to cover bands and theatre restaurants, Ash Flanders never needed one.
But after years of glittering appearances on stages and in school gyms across the country, Ash unceremoniously finds himself seated at a computer terminal in a decidedly un-sparkly corporate office. No longer an acclaimed playwright and performer, Ash is now a legal transcriptionist—typing the words of suspected criminals who are not nearly as fascinating as TV suggested.
As Ash painstakingly types out the narratives of petty crims, he begins to interrogate his own poor choices. That thing he did in an abandoned carpark. The visit to the horse knackery. Those people at the old folks home. All of it in service of one thing: making people laugh.
But as his own transcript unravels, Ash realises it’s about making her laugh. His toughest audience. A heavy-drinking, chain-smoking behemoth named Heather Flanders. And her health is getting so dire it’s, well… laughable.
Photo. credit: Pia Johnson