The Adelaide Botanic Gardens is a magical place. No matter which path you meander down, you find yourself immersed in nature. It is the fitting location for Slingsby’s Adelaide Festival production of A Concise Compendium of Wonder. This show will sadly be Slingsby’s final production, with an Adelaide season and regional tour.
Slingsby’s Artistic Director and CEO Andy Packer spoke to Glam Adelaide about the production and their touring venue, and he also shared with us where his love of the Arts grew from.
“I was very fortunate that the primary school I went to, Campbelltown Primary School, had a really great drama teacher. They would write completely original musicals. I went on to a performing arts specialist school and I was just extraordinarily lucky to have incredible teachers. I got to learn to express myself, learn creativity and the power that can happen in a young person’s life. From there, when I got to the end of high school, I again was very fortunate. I didn’t know whether to do the dance course or the drama course at Adelaide University, so I auditioned for both…and I got into both. I ended up choosing to do the drama course, and I was then taught under the leadership of Frank Ford. So just a very, very fortunate pathway.”
Slingsby is an internationally acclaimed Adelaide-based theatre company creating original works for family audiences and young people aged eight and over. Founded in 2007, they are known for creating emotionally powerful theatrical experiences that renew wonder in our world and explore the role we each play in building a happy and harmonious society.
“Slingsby was a dream that I had for about a decade. When I came out of the theatre course at Adelaide University I went into a small touring theatre company called Ricochet with two other actors. We toured a lot into regional communities. I spent a few years as a producer working for the Adelaide Fringe and for Carclew. Then the time was right to go out on my own and leave the safety of those jobs and start a theatre company. By some miracle of timing, the Arts SA had a new strategy called the Theatre Development Strategy, which invited companies to pitch for three-years of funding. I put together a pretty compelling vision and even though we’d never made a show at that stage, we received three years of funding. We made our first show, The Tragic Life of the Cheeseboy, which was invited to 10 countries around the world only a year after it opened.”
A Concise Compendium of Wonder brings together three original stories – The Childhood of the World, The Giant’s Garden and The Tree of Light. This triptych takes audiences on an imaginative journey across time and space, exploring humanity’s evolving relationship with nature. Written by award-winning Australian authors Jennifer Mills, Ursula Dubosarsky and Ceridwen Dovey, these newly reimagined fairy tales are bound by themes of environmental stewardship, resilience and hope.
“We’ve been working on this show for maybe five years in some respects – just dreaming of it. The name, A Concise Compendium of Wonder, came about early 2021. The idea was, instead of touring with one show, why not tour with three shows? The three stories chart almost 2,000 years of humanity’s relationship with the natural world and Slingsby’s always been about wonder. I read a lot of fairy tales and came back with a short list. We chose to use the stories of Hansel and Gretel, The Selfish Giant and Hans Christian Andersen’s A Little Match Girl. In all of these there’s a tree or a forest featured.”
The season also marks the debut of The Wandering Hall of Possibility, Slingsby’s new regeneratively designed, custom-built, transportable wooden theatre.
“Since we started touring in 2022, we started measuring our carbon footprint. We really thought through how we could tour into the future by reducing our carbon footprint, but leaning into abundance rather than austerity. A lot of companies are touring without sets or not touring at all, but we’re an immersive touring company, so design is central to who we are. So instead, we made our own portable building. We now have this incredible building that as a theatre maker is just like a dream machine, It’s got every technical piece of theatre making equipment you could ever want but in a demountable building.”
This production features some of Australia’s most in-demand performers: Elizabeth Hay, Nathan O’Keefe and Ren Williams.
“It’s been so great. Nathan’s worked with us quite a lot in the past, and Ren was kind of new to the team. But they’re all makers. That’s the beautiful thing about them. They’re asking really great questions about the story, about the character, about this moment. But they’re also generating lots and lots of ideas. I have the beautiful task of being the director sitting outside watching and trying to pull the strands together. There’s a lot of joy in the room. And they’ve really embraced the challenging task of three hour long shows. We also have the brilliant Elizabeth Hay in the cast, who has also been part of the creative development of the triptych.”
Andy sees Slingsby’s final Adelaide season as a full-circle moment, offering audiences the opportunity to say farewell to the company with the ultimate magical send-off.
“One of the things I’ve always loved with Slingsby’s work is seeing the audience enter the space and see the looks on their face as they step into this new world. We always have this very immersive experience on the way in. So I really enjoy that. But what I love most is seeing them leave the space and the looks on people’s faces. Sometimes there’s a tear in the eye, but people look refreshed and more optimistic for their day. On the Saturdays and Sundays we do the full triptych – people can come and see all three shows back-to-back, and the last show, The Tree of Light, at the very end of that story we land the audience back on earth and they’ll be stepping out of the building at 7.15pm into golden hour, in the Botanic Gardens, surrounded by trees, and it’s going to be stunning.”
A Concise Compendium of Wonder
Adelaide Festival 2026
18 Feb – 15 Mar
Venue: The Wandering Hall of Possibility, Plane Tree Lawn, Adelaide Botanic Garden
Tickets: Available via www.adelaidefestival.com.au
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