Rumpus Theatre
Address
100 Sixth Street, Bowden 5007
@rumpustheatre
Website
rumpustheatre.org
A bright aqua and gold building in cool, semi-industrial Bowden is as welcoming as it is colourful.
This is the home of Rumpus Theatre, an inclusive theatre company that presents up to six works a year in an old Clipsal factory building that was formerly an art gallery.
The theatre collective lovingly restored the Conroy’s Smallgoods-adjacent building with two rehearsal rooms, a main theatre, office spaces and hot desks (available to rent), and a delightfully kitsch Meg Wilson-designed foyer straight out of your nana’s suburban house from the ‘80s.
Founded by theatre identities Yasmin Gurreeboo, Nescha Jelk and Rebecca Mayo in 2019, Rumpus is where you can catch South Australian-made and -produced work that has inclusivity and accessibility front and centre.
For Rumpus’ Season Manager and actor Blake Taylor, the new and emerging company is a “collective of theatre-makers, artists, designers and directors who have banded together for a common cause”. That cause? To get work by and for locals on stage.
“The ethos of Rumpus is all about supporting our peers in the development of creating new works,” he says.
Just a short walk from the new-ish Bowden apartments and townhouses, Rumpus forms a creative block of arts and events spaces in the inner-west industrial suburb as neighbours include circus school Cirkidz and winery and event hub, Oddio.
Community is paramount to Rumpus; reflected in not only the make-up of volunteers and supporters but the art and furniture found in the space as community art lines the walls while pre-loved furniture and kindly donated appliances are found throughout the space.
Rumpus’ current season features, in their own words, “South Australia’s most ambitious creatives take on the most pressing issues of our time: post-truth, climate change, the theatrical canon and conspiracy theories about Grease”.
This includes shows such as The Triumph of Man: A Comedy in Two Acts (September 13-26), Michele Saint-Yves’ Clock for No Time (October 19-31), The Good Company Theatre’s Hamlet in the Other Room (November 29-Decmber 7) and Mary Angley’s Grief Lightning: A Satire in 78 Slides (January 2022).
Then there are the baby plays, where Rumpus helps to develop works-in-progress with a possibility of performance at the end of development.
“Artists can come to Rumpus with an idea and we ask: What story do you want to tell? What are you passionate about? And how can we enable you to tell that in a way that’s going to be realistic for you?
“Rumpus allows us as artists to have the space to create those stories,” Blake says.
“A lot of the shows in our next season involves disabled artists or shows created entirely by disabled artists, and so those shows have been designed with access in mind. That’s something we’re constantly trying to improve: how broad an audience can we go to, how much inclusion can we have?”
