Meet the works shaping Heartland Festival 2026

November 3, 2026

Heartland Festival is almost here,and we’re thrilled to reveal this year’s Supper Club lineup. Hosted by the fabulous Nancy Denis, Supper Club brings together five bold new works from some of Australia’s most exciting artists. It’s your chance to experience fresh ideas, powerful storytelling and works in development before they reach the main stage. Plus, we’ll be serving supper on us.

These artists are exactly why Heartland exists: to champion bold new voices, nurture new work and bring the next generation of Western Sydney stories to life. This AusArt Day, we’re inviting audiences to be part of that journey through a donation to Heartland Festival.

From sharp satire and fever dreams to opera, endurance and unexpected encounters, this year’s lineup is packed with imagination, heart and surprise.

Meet the artists and their works joining us this November.

CARE INSTRUCTIONS

By: Alison Eaton

A performance about the performance of care. A bouffon satire on the systems designed to care for us – and what gets lost in the process.

One devoted worker follows the approved procedures with unwavering conviction, because if all the boxes are ticked, the human must be fine. Probably.

FEVER PITCH

By: Daley Rangi

“It begins. A thing. A small thing. A tiny thing.“

Join anti-disciplinary artist Daley Rangi on a wild, anxious descent through pandemics, extinction and the terrifying mess of being human.

Part performance lecture, part fever dream, Fever Pitch excavates scientific hubris and our habit of poking at things we probably should have left alone.

FIREBIRD

Book and Lyrics by Josipa Draisma,

Mara Knežević & Šime Knežević

Music by Željko Papić

In a mysterious old house tangled in the bush at the far edges of suburbia, an ageing opera singer draws an unlikely constellation of women into her orbit.

Firebird is a funny, moving and mythic story about finding your voice and the lifelong act of becoming.

LANDING STRIP

By: Dilroop Khangura

What if your gyno appointment didn’t have to be awkward, avoided eye contact with your female doctor while she lubes up the most plastic looking speculum in history? What if it could be so much more?

MAGIC NUMBERS

By: Charlotte Salusinszky

Magic Numbers is a solo performance about long-distance running and its numerical ideals, a smorgasboard of pace, distance, cadence, heart rate and beyond, uploaded dutifully on Strava for the ‘Kudos’.

A deeply personal exploration of endurance, obsession and the complicated relationship between marathon running and a teenage eating disorder.