Caesar | Caesar - PORTIA & BRUTUS (Both Venues)

Watch PORTIA at Theatre Works at 4pm, then BRUTUS at Explosives Factory at 7:30pm

a radical reimagining of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Told from competing perspectives, and unfolding simultaneously across two iconic venues, this groundbreaking theatrical event places audiences at the centre of a society tearing itself apart. As action is live-streamed between Theatre Works Main Space and the Explosives Factory, audiences at both venues witness the same events as two very different stories.

You choose. Will you stand beside Brutus as he plots to unseat a tyrant within the Explosive Factory’s high-stakes television studio, where image is everything and truth is negotiable? Will you join Portia at Theatre Works’ Main Space, burning with purpose, yet powerless to act as the world fractures around us? Or, why not see both sides of the story: book a double ticket and piece together the truth behind the media spin.

Over a three-week season, from 12 – 28 November 2026, award-winning theatre-makers Christopher Bryant (Theatre Works’ The Other Place), Heather Fairbairn (Victorian Opera’s Katya Kabanova) and Kate Wild (fortyfivedownstairs’ The Cherry Orchard) join forces to interrogate Shakespeare's thriller through the lens of our media-saturated political present, while daring to offer an alternative eco-feminist future.

What happens when democracy becomes televised entertainment? When revolution becomes content? When the planet itself becomes collateral damage in the fight for fame and power?

With new text by Christopher Bryant and a cinematic supercut of Shakespeare’s original masterpiece, Fairbairn + Wild Productions’ CAESAR | CAESAR is bold, urgent and unmissable – a theatrical revolt where the personal is political, and the political is perilously personal.

“Adventurous, courageous and persuasive [...] This Katya deserves five stars for its energy, originality and general excellence.”

- The Age (Katya Kabanova)

“A coup for Victorian Opera, which has struck gold with the powerful and refreshingly new cinematic approach of this production directed by Heather Fairbairn.”

- Patricia Maunder, Limelight (Katya Kabanova)

“Brilliant… clever” - Chris Boyd, The Australian “The genius of Christopher Bryant’s play [...] is a testament to theatre; its history, its versatility and, in particular, to two women whose legacy should be acknowledged.”

- David McLean, Melbourne Observer (The Other Place)

“An almost-perfect work of art.” Crikey The Cherry Orchard, forty-five downstairs, directed by Kate Wild “This sensitive, intelligent production of a much-loved classic marks director Kate Wild as someone to watch…. This is a production of unusual quality, highly recommended.”

- The Age (The Seagull)