Flagonheart Theatre Co. is a collective of renegade theatre artists and technicians exploring the intersections of performance, spectatorship and the politics of this relationship. Since its first production in 2004, Flagonheart has endeavoured to redefine the boundaries of theatrical participation and challenge the authority of texts by radically enmeshing audiences in the unfolding of stories critical to our times.
Founded by Gibson Hearty-Michaels in 2003 as a means of mounting a freestanding performance of Much Ado About Nothing that critiqued the aftermath of the millennium, Flagonheart has expanded to encompass a repertoire that pushes theatrical dynamics to their limits while exploring the history of the medium with an expansive literary gaze. Following Hearty-Michaels tragic passing in 2007, the company has been led by Joffrey Hank Windmere to achieve critical acclaim and a cult following.
In 2009, Flagonheart was awarded the Jane Millicent Stephens Award for Social Theatre for its production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, scripted by Hansel Bilson-Franks and performed in an abandoned factory in Ohio. In 2012, the company was honoured with the Bircher Prize for Exploratory Theatre from the University of Nockland for a remounting of the same production, this time in a former mental hospital in Ireland.
2016 saw Flagonheart collaborating with celebrated film director Anthony Pastel and designer Christina Marxwell to deliver a production of King Lear disguised as a showing at a Sydney fashion event. This action saw the cast and technical team arrested for encouraging audiences to remove their clothes before exiting the venue, and earned them a mention in New Arts Journal‘s annual list of Top 10 Shakespeare Productions.
2017 was the company’s biggest year yet, with a global tour of their production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, directed by Nell Seasell and performed at a series of theatre festivals and events across the UK, Asia and Europe. Notably, the company was not permitted entry to the US.