Adelaide based children’s theatre company Patch Theatre is thrilled to announce it will head back to the theatre for the first time since lockdown, raising the curtain on its multi-award-winning production Me & My Shadow.  

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, Me & My Shadow will commence its season at the Adelaide Festival Centre in mid-August before embarking on a seven venue regional tour of South Australia until the end of September.

Artistic Director Geoff Cobham said: “We are incredibly excited to be able to bring live performance back into the lives of the young and young at heart. I collaborated on Me & My Shadow in 2010 as the lighting and set designer so it holds a special place for me as a remarkable, moving and wholly original work. This tour will also mark the 10-year anniversary of Me & My Shadow, so we’re looking forward to blowing out 10 candles on a cake, in a post-COVID hygienic way, I’m told a hair dryer could be a good option!”

It has been an incredibly busy 12 months for the team at Patch Theatre with three premiere productions – ZOOOM, Firefly Forest and The Lighthouse; a tour of Australia for Me & My Shadow and Glow; a tour of China for the much-loved production Emily Loves to Bounce; and a tour of New Zealand for Mr McGee and the Biting Flea. Geoff Cobham says the success of 2019 and the repurposing of tour funds allowed the company to survive the lockdown period, keeping its core staff, artists and creatives employed on new projects. 

Geoff Cobham said: “It has been a really strange time because the chaos has actually given us the opportunity to work outside normal spheres and to think and innovate differently. Lockdown has been a particularly creative time for us at Patch, we haven’t had the pressures of opening nights, regional tours, tickets sales and box office logistics so it has given us time to create and in many ways we’ve had a rare opportunity to not only survive the pandemic but to emerge stronger and more focused.”

He continued: “We’ve gone into an exciting creative development with the talented team at Gravity and Other Myths, on a production we’re working towards for 2021. We have also had the opportunity to pull forward other creative developments with children’s theatre maven Dave Brown and award-winning playwright Sally Hardy, so in many ways we’ve been as busy as ever and we feel strangely optimistic, even with everything that has gone before us over the past 3 months.”  

Me & My Shadow has toured to audiences of 64,000 people throughout metropolitan and regional Australia over the last decade including a season at the Sydney Opera House in 2011. The production has twice toured America in 2013 and 2015 with seasons in New York and Washington DC, and toured China in 2018. 

Collaboratively created by Zoë Barry, Dave Brown, Geoff Cobham, Roz Hervey, Nathan 

O’Keefe, Astrid Pill and Bob Weatherly

Remount Director Roz Hervey

2020 Tour Cast Temeka Lawlor and Tim Overton 

Touring Crew Jacinta Way and Tom Bayford

Tour Dates:

Me & My Shadow 2020 GP seasonAdelaide, Dunstan PlayhouseSat 15, 22 & 29 Aug, 11am & 2pm

Me & My Shadow 2020 Schools’ SeasonAdelaide, Dunstan Playhouse12–28 Aug, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Port Pirie, Northern Festival Centre
1 Sep 10:15am & 1:00pm

Whyalla, Middleback Theatre
3 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Renmark, Chaffey Theatre
8 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Mt Gambier, Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre
10 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Noarlunga, Hopgood Theatre
15–18 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Tanunda, Barossa Arts Centre
22 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Golden Grove, Golden Grove Arts Centre
24 & 25 Sep, 10:15am & 1:00pm

Bookings: https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/events/me-and-my-shadow/  BASS: 13 12 46

Vision: View the Me & My Shadow trailer here.

Images: View images here

Notes: 

A restricted admissions capacity of 50 percent will apply to the Dunstan Playhouse.  

Patch Theatre has been making shows for 4–8-year-old children and their families from its home in South Australia since 1972. Over the past 48 years, Patch Theatre has performed 110 much loved theatre works and performed to over 1.85 million children around the world. Patch Theatre has presented more than 30 international seasons at centres and festivals across the US, Canada, Singapore, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. 

Media Enquiries:

Anthea Hagar | 0403 651 665 | antheahagar@gmail.com