Essendon Theatre Company
The Essendon Theatre Company is a local community-based theatre company it has a long and proud history of producing quality community theatre in Essendon. It produces four production per year including dramas, comedies and pantomimes and since it’s formation in 1976, ETC has produced more than one hundred productions. ETC is a member of The Victorian Drama League and is run on the love and commitment of passionate theatre lovers and volunteers dedicated to amateur theatre.
Essendon Theatre Company Subscription 2025-26
Sunday 23 February 2025
Essendon Theatre Company Subscription
4 shows over 2 years for $75
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Things I know to be true
Between Thursday 19 June 2025 and Saturday 28 June 2025
The Price family appear to be living the Australian dream—a loving household in a solid brick house on a quarter acre block where the passing of time is measured by the seasonal changes in working class patriarch Bob’s beloved roses. The four kids have grown up and spread their wings, with only the youngest, Rosie, still at home. As the seasons turn, their story becomes darker and more difficult. But, with complexity comes richness, resolution and meaning. Epic in existential scope while deeply human in focus, Things I Know To Be True will tug at your heart while asking the big questions about what it is that keeps us going.
Nb: Essendon Theatre Company utilises Theatre restaurant style seating, audience may BYO nibbles and drinks to enjoy during performances.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
Cosi
Between Thursday 11 September 2025 and Saturday 20 September 2025
A young director, Lewis gets to do his first production. The trouble is, he has mental patients for a cast and they want to do an opera, even though there is no orchestra and no one can sing. But the highly strung Mozart fanatic Roy is determined. Against the odds and amid the mayhem of the asylum, Lewis agrees. He then attempts to get the opera on the boards with the help of pyromaniac Doug; Julie, an attractive junkie; obsessive, compulsive Ruth; amorous Cherry and emotionally paralysed legal eagle Henry.
Nb: Essendon Theatre Company utilises Theatre restaurant style seating, audience may BYO nibbles and drinks to enjoy during performances.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
Significant Other
Between Thursday 27 November 2025 and Saturday 6 December 2025
Jordan is single, and finding Mr. Right is much easier said than done. While surrounding himself with his close group of girlfriends it comes to pass that the only thing harder than looking for love is supporting the loved ones around you.
Nb: Essendon Theatre Company utilises Theatre restaurant style seating, audience may BYO nibbles and drinks to enjoy during performances.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
Ordinary Days
Between Friday 4 April 2025 and Sunday 6 April 2025
Ordinary Days is the captivating story of what happens when frazzled and uptight graduate student Deb loses the notebook that contains all of her notes for her thesis somewhere on the streets of New York. Little does she know that Warren, the struggling artist and professional cat sitter who finds and returns the notebook to her, will have such a profound effect on her life. And meanwhile, their actions affect Jason and Claire, a couple inching toward marriage who ultimately can’t seem to completely figure each other out because of an unspeakable tragedy from years ago. Adam Gwon’s witty and captivating four-person song cycle has played around the world professionally, in university settings, and at community theatres.
"Ordinary Days" is being produced in collaboration with The Boilerhouse Community Arts Centre, the first performances will be in Sunbury on 21,22, & 23 March. https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1363078
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
Love, Love, Love
Between Thursday 20 March 2025 and Saturday 29 March 2025
Are baby boomers to blame for the fact that their children's generation is debt-ridden and adrift?
Love, Love, Love takes on the baby boomer generation as it retires, and finds it full of trouble.
It's 1967. Kenneth and Sandra know the world is changing and they want some of it. Smoking, drinking, affectionate and paranoid, they journey forty years from initial burst to full bloom.
Their children, on the other hand, bitterly rail against their parents' irresponsibility and their relaxed, laissez-faire attitude.
Nb: Essendon Theatre Company utilises Theatre restaurant style seating, audience may BYO nibbles and drinks to enjoy during performances.
Essendon Theatre Company
Essendon Theatre Company Subscription 2024-25
Monday 12 February 2024
Essendon Theatre Company Subscription
4 shows over 2 years for $75
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Drinking Habits
Between Thursday 21 November 2024 and Saturday 30 November 2024
Accusations, mistaken identities, and romances run wild in this traditional, laugh-out-loud farce.
Two nuns at the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing have been secretly making wine to keep the convent's doors open, but Paul and Sally, reporters and former fiancees, are hot on their trail. They go undercover as a nun and priest, but their presence, combined with the addition of a new nun, spurs paranoia throughout the convent that spies have been sent from Rome to shut them down.
Wine and secrets are inevitably spilled as everyone tries to preserve the convent and reconnect with lost loves.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
The Skin of Our Teeth
Between Thursday 13 June 2024 and Saturday 22 June 2024
Meet George and Maggie Antrobus of Excelsior, New Jersey, a suburban, commuter-town couple (married for 5,000 years), who bear more than a casual resemblance to that first husband and wife, Adam and Eve: the two Antrobus children, Gladys (perfect in every way, of course) and Henry (who likes to throw rocks and was formerly known as Cain); and their garrulous maid, Sabina (the eternal seductress), who takes it upon herself to break out of character and interrupt the course of the drama at every opportunity ("I don't understand a word of this play!"). Whether he is inventing the alphabet or merely saving the world from apocalypse, George and his redoubtable family somehow manage to survive -- by the skin of their teeth.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
A Tomb with a View
Between Thursday 14 March 2024 and Saturday 23 March 2024
A Tomb With A View is set in as sinister an old library as one is likely to come across presided over by a portrait of a grim faced, mad eyed old man. There, a dusty, lawyer reads a will (involving some millions of pounds) to an equally sinister family one member of which has were wolf tendencies, another wanders around in a toga of Julius Caesar and a third member is a gentle old lady who plants more than seeds in her flower beds.
By the third act, there are more corpses than live members left in the cast and what about the sympathetic nurse and the author of romantic novels are they all, or more than, they seem to be? All is revealed as the plot twists and turns to its surprising conclusion.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Restaurant Style
The Odd Couple - Female Version
Between Thursday 23 November 2023 and Saturday 2 December 2023
Unger and Madison are at it again!
Florence Unger and Olive Madison, that is, in Neil Simon's hilarious contemporary classic: the female version of The Odd Couple.
Instead of the poker party that begins the original version, Ms. Madison has invited the girls over for an evening of Trivial Pursuit. The Pidgeon sisters have been replaced by the two Constanzuela brothers. But the hilarity remains the same.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
We Wrote Some Plays! One Act Play Season
Between Thursday 3 August 2023 and Saturday 12 August 2023
3 x One Act Plays from ETCs Play writers workshop
Between Life & Death By Angelo Snell
The Worst Thing Is By Melissa Forge
Garry By Audrey Farthing
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Puffs
Between Thursday 23 March 2023 and Saturday 1 April 2023
Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic
For seven years a certain boy wizard went to a certain Wizard School and conquered evil. This, however, is not his story. This is the story of the Puffs... who just happened to be there too. A tale for anyone who has never been destined to save the world.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Don't Dress For Dinner
Between Thursday 24 November 2022 and Saturday 3 December 2022
Bernard is planning a romantic weekend with his chic Parisian mistress in his charming converted French farmhouse, whilst his wife, Jacqueline, is away. He has everything organised. Suppose everyone's alibi gets confused with everyone else's. An evening of hilarious confusion ensues as Bernard and Robert improvise at breakneck speed.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Essendon Theatre Company Play Writing Workshops
Tuesday 20 September 2022
Ever had an idea about a play but weren’t sure where to start? Well then ETC’s upcoming Play Writing Workshops could be just what you have been looking for!
Over a series of four evening, budding writers will be encouraged to develop and explore their ideas in the hope of writing a short play. Completed short plays will have the opportunity to be performed as part of Essendon Theatre Company’s 2023 One Act Play season.
The workshops will be run by experienced and award winning playwright and director
Alexander Gibbs & held at Essendon Theatre Company.
Dates: Fortnightly 7.00-9.30pm.
Workshop 1: The Idea – 20 September 2022
Workshop 2: The Play – 4 October 2022
Workshop 3: The Characters – 18 October 2022
Workshop 4: The Script - TBC
Cost: $40.00 for the whole series of workshops payable prior to the first session via the
following link: https://www.trybooking.com/eventlist/communitytheatre
Limited spaces are available so book now to avoid disappointment!
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Tiny Beautiful Things
Between Thursday 14 July 2022 and Saturday 16 July 2022
“Sugar” is trying to finish a book. To make ends meet she reluctantly agrees to take on work as an anonymous advice columnist. In a series of connected vignettes, “Sugar” gets to know several different people and their plethora of personal problems – and in turn, they (and the audience) discover some of her deepest, darkest secrets.
Trigger warning: this show contains themes of sexual and child abuse, addiction and pregnancy loss.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Rumors
Between Thursday 17 March 2022 and Saturday 26 March 2022
Neil Simon's crazy comedy of an upscale dinner party run amok sees the fashion and fur fly when two glamorous guests arrive at a house to an unexpectedly absent host. The speculative stories of what might have happened spin out of control as more guests arrive. Zany consequences arise as the highbrow crew frantically tries to keep track of the increasingly outrageous tales while trying to protect their own self-pretentious reputations.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Death of A Salesman
Between Thursday 29 July 2021 and Saturday 4 December 2021
The story revolves around the last days of Willy Loman, a failing salesman, who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, his sons, and his business associates, we discover how his quest for the "American Dream" kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. A thrilling work of deep and revealing beauty that remains one of the most profound classic dramas of the American theatre.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
ETC Educational Workshop for Careers in Theatre
Sunday 30 May 2021
The workshop is designed to provide students with an opportunity to observe a live rehearsal, participate in directorial feedback and a Q&A session with the cast and crew. The current production for ETC is ‘Death of a Salesman’ which will be opening on June 17th. This experience is open to all Buckley Park College senior students with an interest in theatre.
Workshop
Psycho Beach Party
Between Thursday 18 March 2021 and Saturday 27 March 2021
Chicklet Forrest, a teenage tomboy, desperately wants to be part of the surf crowd on Malibu Beach in 1962. One thing getting in her way is her unfortunate tendency towards split personalities. Among them is a black check out girl, an elderly radio talk show hostess, a male model named Steve and the accounting firm of Edelman and Edelman. Her most dangerous alter ego is a sexually voracious vixen named Ann Bowman who has nothing less than world domination on her mind.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Cuckoo Land
Between Friday 27 November 2020 and Saturday 5 December 2020
The play is a children’s pantomime loosely based on the Ancient Greek Comedy “The Birds” by Aristophanes.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Jack The Ripper - The Musical
Between Thursday 21 November 2019 and Saturday 30 November 2019
The play is a musical reconstruction of incidents relating to the East End murders which took place between Friday, August 31st and Friday, November 9th, 1888, set in a Music Hall and the surrounding streets, as performed by the inhabitants of Whitechapel.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Summer of the Aliens
Between Thursday 5 September 2019 and Saturday 14 September 2019
Lewis lives in a housing commission suburb on the outskirts of the city, Melbourne with his single mother, sister, and grandmother, who is rapidly approaching senility. Lewis' obsessions with aliens masks his own adolescent confusion about the changing world around him.
Lewis' world changes forever when his itinerant father, Eric, suddenly returns home, and Lewis discovers his best friend, Dulcie's heartbreaking secret. The three-act play is set in 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
HomeGrown - A Series of One Act Plays
Between Thursday 20 June 2019 and Saturday 29 June 2019
Over the course of 2018, a number of local writers have been workshopping and developing a series of original one act plays under the mentorship of Award Winning Playwright Michael Olsen. Our second season for the year will involve the performance of three of these unique pieces in preparation for submission to the One Act Play Festivals.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Suite Surrender
Between Thursday 28 March 2019 and Saturday 6 April 2019
It's 1942, and two of Hollywood's biggest divas have descended upon the luxurious Palm Beach Royale Hotel - assistants, luggage, and legendary feud with one another in tow. Everything seems to be in order for their wartime performance...that is, until they are somehow assigned to the same suite. Mistaken identities, overblown egos, double entendres, and a dog named Mr.Boodles round out this hilarious riot of a love note to the classic farces of the 30s and 40s.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
A Good Man
Between Thursday 22 November 2018 and Saturday 1 December 2018
It's a hot July day at the Good Shepherd Funeral Parlor and Martin Lamb, the mortician, is presiding over the wake of the late Walter Porteus. His dream of a perfect wake is undermined by his son Jimmy, and by the conniving, contentious Porteus family, who are already clashing over the will. To further inflame matters, the air conditioning breaks down, the wrong body turns up in the casket and then a mysterious mourner appears and then things really start to get interesting.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
An Unseasonable Fall of Snow
Between Thursday 23 August 2018 and Saturday 1 September 2018
A bewildered young man is questioned by a ruthless investigator, who circles like a predator, forcing him closer and closer to an awful admission. A compelling investigation of truth, consequences, and the ultimate value of human life.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Essendon Theatre Company Playwriting Workshops
Tuesday 17 July 2018
Workshop Outline - Essendon Theatre Company - 2018
Join experienced playright Michael Olsen to learn the fundamentals of playwriting over 8 weekly sessions starting Tuesday 17th July 2018.
Course Outline:
1. Introduction:
2. Character:
3. Plot:
4. Dialogue:
5. Actors, Directors & getting your work on:
6. Review
7. Cold reads
8. Monthly workshops commence
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Child's Play
Between Thursday 31 May 2018 and Saturday 9 June 2018
A Series of one act plays.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
OLD ACTORS NEVER DIE... THEY SIMPLY LOSE THE PLOT
Between Thursday 15 March 2018 and Saturday 24 March 2018
The Mount Home for Retired Theatricals is an unusual place - more like a country house hotel than a home for the elderly.
So when Walter Neville arrives, he is overjoyed to find some of his best friends in residence. All is well until the serial womaniser goes missing - apparently on the run from Russian gangsters. The ladies decide that "He who pays the bills" must be rescued - but how to go about it?
What follows is a truly daft journey into the world of eccentric luvvies!
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Unnecessary Farce
Between Thursday 23 November 2017 and Saturday 2 December 2017
Two cops. Three crooks. Eight doors. Go. In a cheap motel room, an embezzling mayor is supposed to meet with his female accountant, while in the room next-door, two undercover cops wait to catch the meeting on videotape. But there's some confusion as to who's in which room, who's being videotaped, who's taken the money, who's hired a hit man, and why the accountant keeps taking off her clothes.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Baby With The Bathwater
Between Thursday 14 September 2017 and Saturday 23 September 2017
This bitingly satiric black comedy, which enjoyed a long off-Broadway run, begins with Helen and John deciding their newly born child is a girl and naming it Daisy - which leads to all manner of future emotional and personality problems because Daisy is actually a boy. Brilliantly treatrical and wildly hilarious, the play charts the saga of daisy's struggle to establish his identity.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
The Pirate Princess
Between Saturday 1 July 2017 and Saturday 8 July 2017
A Children's Pantomine: The Pirate Princess tells the story of Evalina, a princess who would much rather be a pirate than a princess
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Madagascar
Between Thursday 30 March 2017 and Saturday 8 April 2017
Madagascar is the haunting story of a mysterious disappearance that changes three lives forever. At three different periods in time, three Americans find themselves alone, in the same hotel room overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome. Their stories spill out, weave back and forth – each contradicting, clarifying, deepening what the others say – becoming strands of one gripping and disquieting tale.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
Witness For the Prosecution
Between Thursday 24 November 2016 and Saturday 3 December 2016
This play centers around Leonard Vole after he is arrested for the murder of Emily French. Emily made Leonard her heir, which casts suspicion on Leonard after her murder. Leonard’s wife is then asked to testify which she agrees to do, but not in the defense of her husband but as a witness for the prosecution. As with all of Christie’s work, the audience will be left speechless when the intricate web is unraveled.
Seating 80
Essendon Theatre Company 40th Anniversary
Saturday 15 October 2016
ETC is turning 40 and we would like YOU to join us to celebrate.
Join us for a birthday celebration
Date: Saturday 15 October 2016
Time: 7.30 pm
Venue: Keilor East RSL - 12-22 Hoffmans Rd, Essendon VIC 3040
Cost: $60 per person (2 courses)
RSVP by Saturday 1 October 2016 to 0422 029 483
Come dressed as your favourite ETC character you have either seen or played.
Further detail to follow.
Keilor East RSL
The Weekend
Between Thursday 8 September 2016 and Saturday 17 September 2016
Stephen Febble is tired of the world and is now faced with a family gathering that he wants nothing to do with. When Stephen’s daughter and son-in-law come to stay dragging their incontinent dog with them, it makes him turn quickly to both sarcasm and the bottle. When Stephen’s wife Virginia organises a dinner party and invites the neighbours, it all becomes too much for Stephen to handle.
Seating 80
Seminar
Between Thursday 23 June 2016 and Saturday 2 July 2016
Pulitzer Prize winner Theresa Rebeck brings us a risque’ comedy that follows the lives of four aspiring writers who are desperate to make it big. Calling on the help of international literary figure Leonard to help guide them to make them better writers, some of the group thrive and some fall from the fast moving vehicle. Leonard’s unorthodox direction sends the group head first into broken alliances, broken promises, broken hearts and the weapon is sex.
Seating 80
Five Women Wearing The Same Dress
Between Thursday 7 April 2016 and Saturday 16 April 2016
The play is a comedy set during a 1980s ostentatious wedding reception at a Knoxville, Tennessee, estate, five reluctant, identically clad bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom, each with her own reason to avoid the proceedings below. As the afternoon wears on, these five very different women joyously discover a common bond with each other more than any of them do with the bride in this wickedly funny, irreverent and touching celebration of the women’s spirit.
Seating 80
Boeing Boeing
Between Thursday 26 November 2015 and Saturday 5 December 2015
Bernard thought he could easily cope with his three air hostess fiancees. It was all a question of timetables and a reliable, down-to-earth maid who never forgot to change the photographs in the bedrooms. Only when the “Super” Boeing takes over is he landed with a triple problem on his hands. His old school friend, Robert, arrives unexpectedly in Paris and joins the jet set in a hilarious whirl of confusion and matchmaking.
Seating 80
Aladdin
Between Friday 18 September 2015 and Sunday 27 September 2015
You have all heard the story but this pantomime comes with a twist.
Seating 80
ETC Trivia Night
Friday 24 July 2015
ETC is holding this Fundraising Event to raise money for new lighting for their future productions.
Trivia Night
Private Lives
Between Thursday 25 June 2015 and Saturday 4 July 2015
A divorced couple who are on their honeymoon with their new spouses, discover that they are staying at the same hotel and their rooms are next door to one another. Despite an extremely rocky relationship, they soon realise that they still have feelings for one another. A witty marital farce that should get those laughing muscles nice and sore.
Essendon Theatre Company - Theatre Resturant Style
