Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company South Australia Production present Chalkface at Riverside Theatres from the 3rd to the 5th of November.

In this hilarious new black comedy from multi-award-winning writer Angela Betzien (The Hanging, ABC’s Total Control), audiences will get a sneak peek into one of society’s biggest mysteries: the teachers’ staff room. Chalkface tells the rowdy tale of two teachers who must put their differences aside to stand up for what’s right – even if it means throwing out the rule book altogether.

Pat Novitsky (Catherine McClements), West Vale Primary School’s brilliant but bitter and longest-serving teacher isn’t afraid to voice her opinions: all the kids are terrors, the school’s a zoo, and her colleagues are nitwits. Enter Anna (Stephanie Somerville), bright-eyed, idealistic, and just out of university. Anna’s going to change the world - one gold star at a time. 

As you might suspect, these two don’t quite see eye to eye. Pat thinks Anna’s new-age thinking has nothing on her 35 years of experience. Anna thinks Pat is stuck in the past. When the principal assigns school terror Hurricane Little to Anna’s class, the two teachers come head-to-head in a brutal smackdown of old versus new, exposing everyone’s darkest secrets.

STC Resident Director Jessica Arthur leads a stand-out cast, featuring Catherine McClements (Channel Seven’s Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries), Stephanie Somerville (STC’s Ex Utero), Ezra Juanta (Windmill Theatre Co’s BEEP), Michelle Ny (Outhouse’s Gloria), Nathan O’Keefe (Queensland Theatre Co’s Hydra) and Susan Prior (Channel Ten’s Puberty Blues). 

A laugh-a-minute, cathartic tribute to the unsung heroes of our educational system and an irreverent jab at privatisation, bureaucracy and workplace culture, Chalkface shows us it’s never too late to change, and you're never too old to learn or laugh.