Oily Rag Theatre

We are debuting a new historical walking tour, this time in Port Adelaide and during South Australia History Festival 2026.  18, 21, 24, 27 and 30 May 2026 at 7 p.m. Starts outside Black Diamond Gallery at 66 Commercial Road, Port Adelaide Tickets $25, bookings online essential, link is here .

Coming 31 October and running for three performances only, we will be presenting the South Australian premiere of William Goldman's stage adaptation of Misery . Cast: Heather Crawford as Annie Wilkes, Damien White as Paul Sheldon, and Brian Godfrey as Buster. Venue: Theatre 2 at Star Theatres, 145 Sir Donald Bradman Drive, Hilton Tickets: Full price $30 / Concession card holders $24 / Groups of six plus $26 Book online here here , or contact Star Theatres Star Theatres box office. 

Following our previous sell-out walking tours through Kensington ("Intriguing from go to woe" Adelaide Now), Bowden ("a twist on the usual historical exploration" The Adelaide Show), and Parkside ("important historical stories told in a light and charming manner" Stage Whispers) this year Oily Rag Theatre invite you to join us on a walk through leafy St Peters with two new ghost hosts. Come along for a sunset stroll and hear some stories of the early history of this beautiful suburb. Your guides will be the shades of two "old girls" of Hardwicke Girls College, eager to regale the living with stories of schooling, scandal and eccentrics - including the infamous bone collector!  The walk starts on the footpath outside 6 Third Avenue, St Peters.  Written and researched by Shannon Norfolk.  Dates: 27 and 29 February and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 March. Time: All walks start at 7 p.m. Approximate run time is 80 minutes. Tickets: $25 ge...

Following our previous sell-out walking tours through Kensington ("Intriguing from go to woe" Adelaide Now) and Bowden ("a twist on the usual historical exploration" The Adelaide Show), join us this year for a walk through historic Parkside with not one ghost host, but two! Learn about some of Parkside's darker past, including police chases, shootings, the Parkside Asylum, and a tragedy and scandal that feels all too resonant today, in this must-see for history lovers. Written and researched by Shannon Norfolk.  Written and researched by Shannon Norfolk. Performed by Shannon Norfolk and Heather Crawford. Performance dates: 21, 23, 26, 28 February and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 March 2023.  More photos can be viewed on our Facebook page. 

Following our sell-out season of "Kreepy Kensington" in the 2019 Fringe ("Intriguing from go to woe" Adelaide Now, "a brilliant idea and a hit before it opened" Barefoot Review), this year we present a walking tour through another historical Adelaide suburb. Your guide this year is Beatrice, the shade of a factory worker from the early twentieth century. She will take you on a journey through the darker side of the history of Bowden starting from its early days as a village of industry and factories. Stories of jealous lovers, murder, suicide, the fight for workers rights and more will be revealed in this must-see for history lovers. Written and performed by Shannon Norfolk.  Audience limited to 20 for all performances.  Bookings via  Fringetix .  Tickets: $20.00  Duration: 70 minutes Dates and times: 7.30 p.m. start on 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27 February 7 p.m. start on 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 March.  Starting point: Outside 140 Drayton Street, Bowd...

Our second production for 2019 was Claire Kiechel's Pilgrims , our first show at the Bakehouse Theatre. PILGRIMS by Claire Kiechel 1-10 August 2019 at the Bakehouse Theatre CAST: Shannon Gray - The Girl Jabez Retallick - The Soldier Kyla Booth - Jasmine CREW: Director (and lighting/sound operator) - Kristin Telfer Production designer: Shannon Norfolk Lighting designer: Katherine Kleemann SYNOPSIS The play takes place on board the Destiny, a starship transporting hundreds of migrants from Earth to their new home in a colony far beyond. Two solo passengers, an ex-soldier and a young woman, are assigned to the same cabin. The cabin steward, an AI called Jasmine, is regretful for this mistake and promises everything will be sorted out. It soon turns out however that the two passengers will have to bunk together for the duration of the journey, and be confined to their cabin due to a vaguely described “quarantine”. With only each other (and Jasmine when she visits) for ...

Tickets for our next production, Pilgrims  by Claire Kiechel, are now on sale via the Bakehouse Theatre website. Click here to book! See our Current Production page for production information and updates.

Thank you to everyone who came along to the sell-out season of Kreepy Kensington . We have been asked whether we will do a public season of the walk outside of the Fringe later this year. We do not have any plans for this currently, but will be sure to post here and on Facebook if we do. If you would like us to do the walk as a private once-off for a group this may be possible, please get in touch to discuss at oilyragtheatre @ gmail.com. We are now taking a short break before rehearsals for our next production, Pilgrims , will get underway in May.

Our first production for 2019 was "Kreepy Kensington", a historical walking tour written and designed by Oily Rag Theatre co-runner Shannon Norfolk. We had a sell-out season, information on the production is below.  Sex. Death. Crime. Entrepreneurs, murderers, showmen, sex workers and more will have their stories told on an evening walking tour through the suburb of Kensington by your host, a mysterious woman who last walked these streets over a hundred years ago. Even the most genteel suburbs have a dark story or two to tell... February: 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 27 at 7.30 p.m. March: 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14 at 7 p.m. All tickets are $20.00 with a discount for groups of six or more. The walk starts Mary Mackillop Park, off Phillips Street, Kensington, and lasts for approximately 75 minutes. As this is a walking tour rather than a conventional show, the audience is limited to 20 per performance to maximise everyone's comfort and enjoyment of the experience...

Tickets for all Adelaide Fringe 2019 shows are on sale, which means you can now buy yours for our local-history-with-a-dark-twist walking tour, Kreepy Kensington.

Oily Rag Theatre are done and dusted for 2018. Given that we currently aspire to undertaking only one full production per year, we definitely hit our first year's goals with our premiere production of dark drama  Wolf Lullaby  followed by a slightly impromptu two-performance season of the absurdist comedy Matt & Ben . Next up is our Adelaide Fringe 2019, a guided walking tour entitled Kreepy Kensington , written and designed by Shannon Norfolk. Please see the menu or sidebar for a page listing our previous productions. Each page contains information including a cast and crew list, plot synopsis, director's notes, reviews, and photos. It's a very short page for now, but hopefully that will change!

We didn't actually plan on doing a second show in 2018. Then we got an invitation to register for the Back 2 Back Short Show Festival at Star Theatres, and whipped this quickie comedy out for two performances.  ​ Thank you to Malcolm Harslett and the team at Star Theatres.  SYNOPSIS An award-winning absurdist comedy written by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers, Matt & Ben  is the story of two struggling young actors and BFFs, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and the day a screenplay falls from the sky onto the coffee table in Ben's apartment. The title: Good Will Hunting . The authors: them! Is this the big break Matt and Ben have been waiting for... or are they being tested by a higher power?  DIRECTOR'S NOTES Much like the screenplay for Good Will Hunting falling from the sky into Ben’s apartment, this opportunity to do Matt & Ben came about quite unexpectedly when Malcolm Harslett reached out to Oily Rag Theatre informing us about the Back 2 Bac...

Oily Rag Theatre's first official production under our official name. Response to this challenging play was mixed (see the reviews below) but we are not inclined to take the path of least resistance. Thanks and gratitude to everyone who supported us, especially Martha Lott and Holden Street Theatres.  ​ SYNOPSIS A small boy is found dead in a popular children's play spot and suspicion quickly falls on nine-year-old Lizzie Gael. Local policeman Ray is already set against Lizzie due to recent antisocial behaviour. Her father Warren is outraged at what he perceives as a witch hunt against his daughter. But her mother Angela finds herself torn between a natural instinct to protect her child and a growing fear that Lizzie did the deed. Lizzie herself can only give increasingly strange and contradictory accounts of her movements on the day in question, and wakes up screaming from nightmares in which a menacing "Wolf" looms out of the darkness to devour her.  Insp...

An honorary Oily Rag Theatre production. In 2016, Kristin and Shannon had a "test run" at producing their own show, under the guidance and banner of Moore Books SA, a company they had both worked with on several previous shows. This production was originally going to be the Australian premiere of a stage adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Preparations had well and truly commenced when Kristin got the bad news from the playwright that Hulu had got exclusive rights to the property for an upcoming TV series adaptation so our stage production would have to be cancelled. So a Plan B was required and quickly. Kristin has loved Death and the Maiden  since high school, and made several unsuccessful attempts to apply to other groups to direct it for them. The production very fortunately fit the timeline and budget already in place for The Handmaid's Tale  and actress Cheryl Douglas was amenable to staying on board for a totally different role in a tota...