UMAC to host exclusive return of landmark Back to Back Theatre work in Parkville

University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC) will host the exclusive Australian return of Back to Back Theatre’s acclaimed production Ganesh Versus the Third Reich this June.

It brings one of the country’s most celebrated contemporary theatre works back to Melbourne for a strictly limited season in Parkville.

The production will run from June 17 to 19 at the Union Theatre and marks the first time Melbourne audiences will have a chance to see the work here in around 15 years. Its return comes ahead of a major international appearance by Back to Back Theatre at Paris’s Festival d’Automne later this year.

Originally premiering at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2011, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich has since toured more than 34 cities worldwide and become one of Australia’s most recognised contemporary theatre works. Along the way it has collected major honours including a Helpmann Award for Best Play, an Edinburgh International Festival Herald Angel Critics Award, three Green Room Awards and The Age Critics’ Award at Melbourne Festival.

The work comes from Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre, one of Australia’s most internationally respected theatre companies, known for creating original performance led by an ensemble of actors with disability. The company has continued to build its reputation in recent years, becoming the first Australian company to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre at the 2024 Venice Biennale, and winning the prestigious International Ibsen Award in 2022.

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich begins with the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh travelling through Nazi Germany to reclaim the swastika, an ancient symbol with deep cultural and religious meaning long before its appropriation by the Nazis. But the production also unfolds on another level, as the actors themselves question authorship, representation and the ethics of storytelling.

According to UMAC, the result is a work that is “poignant, beautiful, disarming” and deeply engaged with questions about who has the right to tell a story and who has the right to be heard.

Back to Back Theatre artistic director Bruce Gladwin said the themes of the work remained highly relevant.

“At its core it’s a piece about agency, about authorship, authority, and representation and it continues to hold us to those questions,” he said.

UMAC’s director of performing arts, Virginia Lovett, said the return of the production was a major moment for Melbourne audiences.

“It has been 15 years since Melbourne audiences experienced this landmark production,” she said.

“I am thrilled to be able to program it for UMAC’s 2026 season before the company heads to Paris for the prestigious Festival d’Automne.”

For Parkville, the season adds another significant cultural event to the University of Melbourne’s growing arts and performance offering. UMAC has increasingly positioned its northern CBD-edge precinct as a destination for major contemporary works, and the return of Ganesh Versus the Third Reich continues that push.

Tickets are on sale now via UMAC and Ticketmaster. •