Arts Centre Melbourne announces world-class performances welcoming Victorians back to the Ian Potter State Theatre.
After a refurbishment, Arts Centre Melbourne’s Ian Potter State Theatre is finally swinging its doors back open, and Housewarming is bringing more than 100 Victorian artists together for a free four-day celebration.
The theatre closed its doors back in March 2024 for its first major refurbishment since it opened in 1984, and now it’s reopening six months ahead of schedule as the first completed milestone of the Victorian government’s Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation project.
Beyond the fresh paint job, the upgrades bring genuinely useful stuff: audience members with mobility challenges can now choose seating across every level for the first time, thanks to two new lifts, new aisles through the Stalls and Circle, and extra rows added to the Balcony.
There’s upgraded heating and cooling too, plus overhauled lighting and sound systems, all while keeping the heritage grandeur of John Truscott’s original design intact.
Once the theatre reopens, there’s a stacked run of programming lined up, from a full ballet season, an opera gala and a 70th-anniversary musical, with Housewarming itself running as the major free centrepiece of the celebrations.
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Housewarming
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- Friday 9 October: 6pm, 8pm
- Saturday 10 October: 2pm*, 5pm, 8pm
- Sunday 11 October: 1pm*, 3:30pm
- Monday 12 October: 10.30am, 1pm* (Schools)
- *Auslan interpreted performances: Saturday 10 October 2pm, Sunday 11 October 1pm, Monday 12 October 1pm
- Free tickets available now
The headline event of the reopening, Housewarming is a free, fast-paced mash-up of dance, circus, music and theatre, directed by Melbourne theatre-maker Michael Kantor.
Musical comedy performer Jude Perl leads audiences on a hunt for a missing lyrebird from the theatre’s iconic red curtain, joined along the way by Australian Ballet principal Brett Chynoweth, singer-songwriters Emma Donovan and Eliza Hull, dancer roya the destroya, Circus Oz, Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, Melbourne Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, the Australian Ballet School, Stephanie Lake Company, a new commission from Robin Fox, children’s choir The Yarra Voices, Cypher Culture x Jungle City and musical theatre students from the Victorian College of the Arts.
The Listies are bringing the laughs for families on 11 October, while schools get their own sessions on 12 October. There are 18,000 free tickets up for grabs, and organisers reckon they won’t hang around.
Alongside the main event, entry to ENCORE!, a new exhibition marking 50 years of the Australian Performing Arts Collection, is free across the Housewarming weekend, with guided tours, DJ sets and roaming performances from Born in a Taxi thrown in too.
Food trucks will roll into the Forecourt slinging wood-fired pizza, Korean and Japanese street food and Greek doughnuts, alongside a Connoisseur ice cream pop-up. Over the nights of 9 and 10 October, the Theatres Building Spire will also get a laser-mapped light makeover called Spire Alight, tracing its architecture — including its ballerina steel skirt — into a glowing animated artwork.
The Wagner Gala Concert
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- 16 October
- Ian Potter State Theatre
- Tickets here
Opera Australia returns to the Ian Potter State Theatre with a celebration of Richard Wagner’s music, composed for huge orchestral forces and voices built to fill the room.
Leading the charge is conductor Michael Güttler, one of the world’s foremost Wagner specialists, at the helm of Orchestra Victoria for the night. He’s joined by a stacked line-up of vocalists including dramatic soprano Catherine Foster, tenor Sergei Skorokhodov and Australian baritone James Clayton, with more Opera Australia artists still to be announced.
The Nutcracker at Arts Centre Melbourne
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- 24 – 31 October
- Ian Potter State Theatre
- Tickets here
The Australian Ballet marks its homecoming with a special season of Sir Peter Wright’s classic production.
Set to Tchaikovsky’s much-loved score, the ballet follows young student Clara as she celebrates Christmas Eve with her family. Designer John F. Macfarlane brings it all to life with whirling snowflakes, a towering Christmas tree and a Sugar Plum Fairy dressed head to toe in candy-floss pink.
My Fair Lady
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- 14 November 2026 – 17 January 2027
- Ian Potter State Theatre
- Tickets here
Celebrating 70 years since its Broadway debut, Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady becomes the first major musical to hit the stage of the refurbished theatre, courtesy of Opera Australia.
The production stars Nathaniel Parker as Professor Henry Higgins and Claire Lyon as Eliza Doolittle, alongside returning favourites Reg Livermore, Robyn Nevin and Tony Llewellyn-Jones. Expect a stack of unforgettable numbers along the way, including Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?, I Could Have Danced All Night and Get Me to the Church on Time.
Soundtrack to Our Lives
- 18 April 2027
- Ian Potter State Theatre
Looking further ahead, this epic free concert comes from creator Joseph O’Farrell (JOF) as part of a Betty Project, an initiative built around large-scale community experiences.
The Next Big Thing
- 22 – 24 April 2027
- Ian Potter State Theatre
- Tickets here
Circus Oz and the Flying Fruit Fly Circus team up for a high-flying, intergenerational show exploring what happens when generations defy gravity together.
Both companies have spent roughly five decades building their own reputations in the Australian circus scene, and this show marks the first time they’ve actually shared a stage together.
The result blends comedy, big stunts and genuine skill, with younger and older performers swapping tricks of the trade as the show looks back on where circus has been and forward to where it’s headed.
Arts Centre Melbourne
Arts Centre Melbourne is Australia’s largest performing arts centre, home to Hamer Hall, Sidney Myer Music Bowl and the Theatres Building, and resident companies The Australian Ballet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Theatre Company and Opera Australia.
With the Ian Potter State Theatre boasting the largest stage in the Southern Hemisphere, bigger than four tennis courts, this reopening program is shaping up as one of the year’s biggest culture drops for Victoria.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Arts Centre Melbourne.
