SA Drink Of The Week

Andy Packer

Musical Pilgrimage

When a South Australian theatre company that began with The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy – performed more than 800 times worldwide – prepares to take its final bow, it doesn’t fade quietly. Instead, Slingsby is staging its most expensive and ambitious production yet: A Concise Compendium of Wonder, a triptych of three interconnected shows housed in a custom-built structure in the Botanic Gardens during the Adelaide Festival.In this episode, we settle into Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility in Parkside with artistic director and CEO Andy Packer for a wide-ranging conversation that explores the company’s distinctive aesthetic, their commitment to treating young audiences with intellectual honesty, and why nostalgia creates the perfect emotional space for processing difficult truths.

In the South Australian Drink Of The Week, we taste the company’s signature Hall of Possibility Tea – a bespoke blend featuring licorice root, organic lavender, red rose petals, spearmint and peppermint that Andy describes as both “invigorating and calming.

“The musical pilgrimage features the Slingsby Ensemble performing “Song for the Adolescent Seal” from their 2018 Adelaide Cabaret Festival show Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas – a piece Andy realised he’d forgotten to mention during our conversation, despite being extremely proud of it.

You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve!

The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards.

And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au

If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it.

And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concise
page.

Running Sheet: A Slingsby Life Of Wonder With Andy Packer

00:00:00 Intro

Introduction

00:03:12 SA Drink Of The Week

The SA Drink Of The Week this week is Brewed by Belinda Hall of Possibilitea.

Belinda Hill of Brewed by Belinda created this bespoke blend specifically for Slingsby, capturing both the company’s aesthetic and the practical needs of artists in creative process. The brief: create something both invigorating and calming.

The blend looks almost theatrical. Organic lavender, red rose petals, organic blue cornflower petals creating visual layers in the pot. Licorice root provides the grounding bass note, with spearmint and peppermint lifting everything. There’s aniseed hiding in there too.
Andy explains the tea’s role in Slingsby’s creative practice. During those inevitable moments developing new work when “you get very lost,” the tea provides structured pause. “People go off and do different things and I’ll have a cup of tea and I might go outside for a little while. Usually you find the solution.”

What’s crucial is that Hall of Possibility Tea won’t get bitter or overly steeped. “There’s no black tea leaf or anything like that. It just gets better.” Andy keeps a flask throughout rehearsal days, taking sips during fifteen-minute breaks.

As we taste, the experience unfolds in layers. Initially, the mint notes dominate. Then the aniseed emerges from backstage, as Andy puts it, “ready for you, it knew you were coming, it was just waiting in the wings.”

By the end of our tasting, all the subtle players have made their entrance. No single flavour dominates. They’re holding hands across the palate like a well-mannered audience at a Slingsby show.

Slingsby has been gifting this tea to presenting partners around the world since 2019. After performances overseas, small tins of Hall of Possibility Tea remain behind, tangible tokens of the connections Slingsby creates between communities.

00:13:08 Andy Packer

Andy Packer describes A Concise Compendium of Wonder as “the perfect bookend” to Slingsby Theatre Company’s twenty-year journey. We’re sitting in the Hall of Possibility in Parkside, where families have gathered to experience work that never softened darkness for young audiences, never offered easy answers. In a few weeks, after the final curtain falls on this ambitious triptych at the Adelaide Festival, Slingsby will cease creating new work. The company that began with The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy, performed more than 800 times worldwide, closes with its most expensive, most ambitious production yet.

In this interview, you’ll discover:

The origins trace back to amateur theatre at La Mama in the late eighties, where Packer learnt that being involved in every aspect wasn’t just practical necessity but essential training. “You are crafting an experience for an audience, not just there for your ego to be on stage, but actually to prepare the space to welcome people into the church that theater can be.”

The crystallising moment arrived in Montreal in 2005, watching Danish company Group 38 perform The Little Match Girl. Packer sat in the audience afterwards and wept for fifteen minutes, unable to move. That company’s aesthetic showed him precisely what he wanted to create. Slingsby’s first expenditure as a company was flying their entire creative team to Hobart to see Group 38 perform again, establishing that benchmark from day one.

The distinctive Slingsby voice, that curious blend of the new and familiar, serves a specific purpose. “When you create a nostalgic space, it’s like you’ve gone on a holiday back in time,” Packer explains. “You let your guard down and that allows you to attend to the deep concern, the deep anxiety that sits deeper.”

Slingsby productions have never shied from exploring loss, loneliness, domestic violence and grief. “We can’t protect our audience, we can’t protect children. We have to prepare them.” But preparation doesn’t mean pessimism. Every show ends with hope.

The conversation hopscotches through key productions:
The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy (800+ performances)
Man Covets Bird (where a boy’s parents no longer recognise him)
Ode to Nonsense (a full opera celebrating Edward Lear)
The Young King (Oscar Wilde’s fable about capitalism performed without softening)
Emil and the Detectives (capturing post-war reconstruction with audiences building cardboard cities)
The Boy Who Talked to Dogs (an Irish-Australian collaboration about surviving domestic violence)

The final chapter confronts climate reality. Measuring carbon use revealed that flying sets internationally consumed vastly more carbon than shipping by sea or road transport. “We can’t be flying sets around anymore. We wanna make the world a better place, but we wanna do it now in a way that reduces our impact on the climate.”

The solution: A Concise Compendium of Wonder. Three shows, Hansel and Gretel, The Selfish Giant, and The Little Match Girl, performed by one cast on one regeneratively designed wooden building that can be disassembled and reused. The Wandering Hall of Possibility features 17 speakers, 5,500 pixels built into walls, seating that reconfigures for each show, all touring by road only.

The three fairytales trace a journey from medieval times to 3099 on a lunar colony. At the centre of each story sits a tree or forest, moving from living as part of the forest, to fighting for access to a single Moreton Bay fig, to finding the last tree on the moon whilst Earth re-greens in humanity’s absence.

For Adelaide audiences, the Wandering Hall sits on Plane Tree Lawn in the Botanic Gardens. This is both thank you season and goodbye. Audiences can experience one show or commit to the full “sling cycle” across one day.

“I think it is the most important thing happening in the universe right now,” Packer says about the intent behind every Slingsby show. “We want this for the people that have bothered to come and be with us.”

01:07:07 Musical Pilgrimage

In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature a piece from the Slingsby show that Andy Packer forgot to mention during our conversation, an oversight that left him “racked with angst.”

Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2018 and was subsequently invited for a three-week season at the New Victory Theater in New York and a festival in Atlanta. COVID prevented those tours. “Sometimes even the big fish get away,” Andy philosophically notes.

The Slingsby Ensemble perform Song for the Adolescent Seal with the distinctive musicality that characterises Quincy Grant’s compositions, spare and emotionally direct. The piece explores the necessary letting go that allows children to grow into their full selves.

There’s additional resonance hearing this now, as Slingsby itself prepares to let go. The song’s metaphor of adolescent seals venturing beyond safe shores speaks to trusting that what you’ve nurtured will survive and flourish independently.

When a South Australian theatre company that began with&nbsp;The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy&nbsp;&ndash; performed more than 800 times worldwide &ndash; prepares to take its final bow, it doesn&rsquo;t fade quietly. Instead, Slingsby is staging its most expensive and ambitious production yet:&nbsp;A Concise Compendium of Wonder, a triptych of three interconnected shows housed in a custom-built structure in the Botanic Gardens during the Adelaide Festival.In this episode, we settle into Slingsby&rsquo;s Hall of Possibility in Parkside with artistic director and CEO Andy Packer for a wide-ranging conversation that explores the company&rsquo;s distinctive aesthetic, their commitment to treating young audiences with intellectual honesty, and why nostalgia creates the perfect emotional space for processing difficult truths.
In the South Australian Drink Of The Week, we taste the company&rsquo;s signature Hall of Possibility Tea &ndash; a bespoke blend featuring licorice root, organic lavender, red rose petals, spearmint and peppermint that Andy describes as both &ldquo;invigorating and calming.
&ldquo;The musical pilgrimage features the Slingsby Ensemble performing &ldquo;Song for the Adolescent Seal&rdquo; from their 2018 Adelaide Cabaret Festival show Songs for Those Who&rsquo;ve Come Across the Seas &ndash; a piece Andy realised he&rsquo;d forgotten to mention during our conversation, despite being extremely proud of it.
You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We&rsquo;re here to serve!
The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for&nbsp;Best Interview Podcast in Australia&nbsp;at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for&nbsp;Best News and Current Affairs Podcast&nbsp;in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards.
And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It&rsquo;s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we&rsquo;ll add you to the list:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au">podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au</a>
If you enjoy the show, please&nbsp;<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/another-boring-thursday-night/id696302138">leave us a 5-star review&nbsp;</a>in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store &ndash;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.redbubble.com/people/theadelaideshow/shop?asc=u">The Adelaide Show Shop</a>. We&rsquo;d greatly appreciate it.
And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://theadelaideshow.com.au/complete-list-adelaide-show-episodes/">our index of all episode in one concise page.</a>
Running Sheet: A Slingsby Life Of Wonder With Andy Packer
00:00:00&nbsp;Intro
Introduction
00:03:12&nbsp;SA Drink Of The Week
The SA Drink Of The Week this week is&nbsp;<a href="https://brewedbybelinda.com.au/">Brewed by Belinda</a>&nbsp;Hall of Possibilitea.
Belinda Hill of Brewed by Belinda created this bespoke blend specifically for Slingsby, capturing both the company&rsquo;s aesthetic and the practical needs of artists in creative process. The brief: create something both invigorating and calming.
The blend looks almost theatrical. Organic lavender, red rose petals, organic blue cornflower petals creating visual layers in the pot. Licorice root provides the grounding bass note, with spearmint and peppermint lifting everything. There&rsquo;s aniseed hiding in there too. Andy explains the tea&rsquo;s role in Slingsby&rsquo;s creative practice. During those inevitable moments developing new work when &ldquo;you get very lost,&rdquo; the tea provides structured pause. &ldquo;People go off and do different things and I&rsquo;ll have a cup of tea and I might go outside for a little while. Usually you find the solution.&rdquo;
What&rsquo;s crucial is that Hall of Possibility Tea won&rsquo;t get bitter or overly steeped. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no black tea leaf or anything like that. It just gets better.&rdquo; Andy keeps a flask throughout rehearsal days, taking sips during fifteen-minute breaks.
As we taste, the experience unfolds in layers. Initially, the mint notes dominate. Then the aniseed emerges from backstage, as Andy puts it, &ldquo;ready for you, it knew you were coming, it was just waiting in the wings.&rdquo;
By the end of our tasting, all the subtle players have made their entrance. No single flavour dominates. They&rsquo;re holding hands across the palate like a well-mannered audience at a Slingsby show.
Slingsby has been gifting this tea to presenting partners around the world since 2019. After performances overseas, small tins of Hall of Possibility Tea remain behind, tangible tokens of the connections Slingsby creates between communities.
00:13:08&nbsp;Andy Packer
Andy Packer describes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.slingsby.net.au/a-concise-compendium-of-wonder/">A Concise Compendium of Wonder</a>&nbsp;as &ldquo;the perfect bookend&rdquo; to Slingsby Theatre Company&rsquo;s twenty-year journey. We&rsquo;re sitting in the Hall of Possibility in Parkside, where families have gathered to experience work that never softened darkness for young audiences, never offered easy answers. In a few weeks, after the final curtain falls on this ambitious&nbsp;<a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/whats-on/season-2026/a-concise-compendium-of-wonder/">triptych at the Adelaide Festival</a>, Slingsby will cease creating new work. The company that began with&nbsp;The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy, performed more than 800 times worldwide, closes with its most expensive, most ambitious production yet.
In this interview, you&rsquo;ll discover:
The origins trace back to amateur theatre at La Mama in the late eighties, where Packer learnt that being involved in every aspect wasn&rsquo;t just practical necessity but essential training. &ldquo;You are crafting an experience for an audience, not just there for your ego to be on stage, but actually to prepare the space to welcome people into the church that theater can be.&rdquo;
The crystallising moment arrived in Montreal in 2005, watching Danish company Group 38 perform&nbsp;The Little Match Girl. Packer sat in the audience afterwards and wept for fifteen minutes, unable to move. That company&rsquo;s aesthetic showed him precisely what he wanted to create. Slingsby&rsquo;s first expenditure as a company was flying their entire creative team to Hobart to see Group 38 perform again, establishing that benchmark from day one.
The distinctive Slingsby voice, that curious blend of the new and familiar, serves a specific purpose. &ldquo;When you create a nostalgic space, it&rsquo;s like you&rsquo;ve gone on a holiday back in time,&rdquo; Packer explains. &ldquo;You let your guard down and that allows you to attend to the deep concern, the deep anxiety that sits deeper.&rdquo;
Slingsby productions have never shied from exploring loss, loneliness, domestic violence and grief. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t protect our audience, we can&rsquo;t protect children. We have to prepare them.&rdquo; But preparation doesn&rsquo;t mean pessimism. Every show ends with hope.
The conversation hopscotches through key productions:
<ul>
<li>The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy&nbsp;(800+ performances)</li>
<li>Man Covets Bird&nbsp;(where a boy&rsquo;s parents no longer recognise him)</li>
<li>Ode to Nonsense&nbsp;(a full opera celebrating Edward Lear)</li>
<li>The Young King&nbsp;(Oscar Wilde&rsquo;s fable about capitalism performed without softening)</li>
<li>Emil and the Detectives&nbsp;(capturing post-war reconstruction with audiences building cardboard cities)</li>
<li>The Boy Who Talked to Dogs&nbsp;(an Irish-Australian collaboration about surviving domestic violence)</li>
</ul>
The final chapter confronts climate reality. Measuring carbon use revealed that flying sets internationally consumed vastly more carbon than shipping by sea or road transport. &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t be flying sets around anymore. We wanna make the world a better place, but we wanna do it now in a way that reduces our impact on the climate.&rdquo;
The solution:&nbsp;A Concise Compendium of Wonder. Three shows,&nbsp;Hansel and Gretel, The Selfish Giant, and&nbsp;The Little Match Girl, performed by one cast on one regeneratively designed wooden building that can be disassembled and reused. The Wandering Hall of Possibility features 17 speakers, 5,500 pixels built into walls, seating that reconfigures for each show, all touring by road only.
The three fairytales trace a journey from medieval times to 3099 on a lunar colony. At the centre of each story sits a tree or forest, moving from living as part of the forest, to fighting for access to a single Moreton Bay fig, to finding the last tree on the moon whilst Earth re-greens in humanity&rsquo;s absence.
For Adelaide audiences, the Wandering Hall sits on Plane Tree Lawn in the Botanic Gardens. This is both thank you season and goodbye. Audiences can experience one show or commit to the full &ldquo;sling cycle&rdquo; across one day.
&ldquo;I think it is the most important thing happening in the universe right now,&rdquo; Packer says about the intent behind every Slingsby show. &ldquo;We want this for the people that have bothered to come and be with us.&rdquo;
01:07:07&nbsp;Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature a piece from the Slingsby show that Andy Packer forgot to mention during our conversation, an oversight that left him &ldquo;racked with angst.&rdquo;
Songs for Those Who&rsquo;ve Come Across the Seas&nbsp;premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2018 and was subsequently invited for a three-week season at the New Victory Theater in New York and a festival in Atlanta. COVID prevented those tours. &ldquo;Sometimes even the big fish get away,&rdquo; Andy philosophically notes.
The Slingsby Ensemble perform&nbsp;Song for the Adolescent Seal&nbsp;with the distinctive musicality that characterises Quincy Grant&rsquo;s compositions, spare and emotionally direct. The piece explores the necessary letting go that allows children to grow into their full selves.
There&rsquo;s additional resonance hearing this now, as Slingsby itself prepares to let go. The song&rsquo;s metaphor of adolescent seals venturing beyond safe shores speaks to trusting that what you&rsquo;ve nurtured will survive and flourish independently.

A weekly podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us each week as a co-presenter to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, news, interviews, chat and quizzes. 

Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. 

The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis and Nigel Dobson-Keeffe.

Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday (when we have published a new episode) with an overview of that week's show. Plus, consider joining our Inner Circle; a small group of passionate South Aussies who allow us to pick their brains and gain interviewee suggestions.

This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us each week as a co-presenter to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, ...

The Adelaide Show

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, and general news. Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis, and ends with an original song by a South Australian artist. Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday with an overview of that week's show. This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

A podcast recorded in Adelaide that puts South Australian passion on centre stage with a featured guest who joins us to share how they're pursuing their passions. We venture across topics as diverse as history, wine, food, art, music, relationships, critical thinking, health, and general news. Every single interview, every single show, unlocks insights into what drives people to be doing what they're doing and what keeps them striving. The Adelaide Show is produced by Steve Davis, and ends with an original song by a South Australian artist. Please subscribe to our In Crowd list; you get an email each Friday with an overview of that week's show. This podcast began life as Another Boring Thursday Night In Adelaide from episodes 1-79.

Andy Packer, artistic director and CEO of Slingsby Theatre, joins us for an expansive conversation about the company’s 20-year journey creating original, beautiful theatre that never softens darkness for young audiences, the ambitious three-show triptych closing their chapter at the 2026 Adelaide Festival, and the philosophy behind work that treats audiences with radical respect.