For the first time since its Red Stitch debut in 2019, Keziah Warner’s sci-fi odyssey Control is back to challenge and electrify Melbourne audiences.
Set across fifty years and spanning from Melbourne to Mars, the play fuses space colonisation, reality TV, and the rise of artificial intelligence into a sharp meditation on memory, identity, and power.
A pregnant ex-ballerina, a child detective, a jaded puppeteer, and a pop star feminist hurtle towards Mars under the gaze of a watching world – if anyone is still watching at all. Elsewhere, as revolution brews, humans wrestle with the creeping handover of autonomy to machines.
Directed and produced by Olivia Staaf, this new production comes to Theatre Works’ Explosives Factory in St Kilda, with a stellar creative team shaping the spectacle: Silvia Shao on set and costume, Tomas Gerasidimis on lights, Ami Salinas on projections, and Lili Wymond on sound. Performers Seon Williams, Faran Martin, Lachlan Herring and Alex Duncan bring Warner’s fractured future to life.
Control isn’t just theatre – it’s a provocation. Warner’s text confronts the uneasy partnership between humanity and technology, asking what’s lost when even our memories are uploaded to a government-approved cloud. At 90 minutes without interval, it’s a tightly wound ride designed to leave audiences questioning long after the lights fade.
Control runs October 22 to November 1 at Theatre Works Explosives Factory, St Kilda. Tickets start at $25 and are on sale now now.
