La Mama opens 2026 with Elbow Room’s sharp new satire SAINTS

La Mama will launch its 2026 season with a bold reimagining of witchcraft, prophecy and political upheaval, as acclaimed theatre-makers Elbow Room return with their latest work, SAINTS, running from 6 to 27 February at La Mama Courthouse.

Set in England in 1654 – a nation caught between overthrown monarchy, radical new governance and expanding colonial ambitions – SAINTS follows Anna, a woman whose prophecies have all come true. To some, she is a saint; to others, a witch. In a society desperate to decide who belongs on the “right side” of history, her fate hangs on a knife-edge.

The work asks a question that resonates far beyond its 17th-century frame: when the world is transforming at breakneck speed, who gets to decide what is good, what is evil – and what happens when the ground shifts beneath us?

Elbow Room’s signature blend of satire, theatricality and razor-sharp social commentary drives the production. Co-director and co-artistic director Emily Tomlins said the work draws both from real events and the cultural imagination that shaped a generation.

“Inspired in equal measure by true events and by nineties witchcraft movies, SAINTS is an imaginative satire of a world on the edge of changing forever,” she said. “It will take audiences on a journey through the seeds of British colonialism, and of resistance to it.”

Writer and co-director Marcel Dorney said the team wanted to explore what it felt like to live through a technological and ideological revolution – a time when ordinary people sensed seismic change coming.

“We want to bring to the stage people living in what was, to them, a new world of communication, transformed by technology, illuminated by radical thought and spiritual urgency,” he said. “They knew their world was about to change utterly, and ordinary people felt closer to it than they’d ever dreamed.”

True to Elbow Room’s style, humour and unease sit side by side as SAINTS examines the desire to be “on the right side of history” – and the impossibility of knowing where that line truly lies.

The production marks another major collaboration between La Mama and Elbow Room, an ensemble celebrated for works that provoke, entertain and unsettle in equal measure. Supported by City of Melbourne Arts Grants and The Robert Salzer Foundation, the show promises inventive design, vivid performances and a timely interrogation of power, belief and belonging.

SAINTS runs February 6 to 27, 2026, with a duration of 110 minutes including interval, at La Mama Courthouse in Carlton.

More details at lamama.com.au.