Daniel Evans Lifts The Curtain On Life As Queensland Theatre Company’s Artistic Director
all feeling. no filter.
Get in your feelings, Brisbane, we’re going to the theatre. Taking on big emotions and even bigger storylines, Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) is setting sail with a jam-packed 2026 roster. With glittering reviews and standing ovations left nd right, QTC is really making its mark – but what happens before the curtain call? To get the real BTS, I speak to QTC’s Artistic Director, Daniel Evans, as he busily prepares for the standout year ahead.
Looking back on how he got here, the heart-led stories that are shaping the year ahead, and even a brief stint in reality TV, we hear how this theatre kid has gone on to artistically direct one of the state’s most exciting theatre companies.
A lifelong love
There’s a strange but powerful electricity that comes from seeing live theatre. A dark room full of strangers, all watching the same story play out in real time before the final bows are taken and the room empties – that exact performance never to be experienced again.
For Daniel Evans, it’s sacred.
As a boy growing up in suburban Brisbane, Evans recalls his love affair with theatre beginning at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre, watching shows like Grease and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat unfold on the stage before him. “It was like it was punching out of the proscenium theatre and into my chest,” he says. “QPAC kind of became a church.” And so, a young Daniel Evans (unofficially) began his career in the arts, directing, starring in, and casting fellow 12-year-olds to be in his backyard adaptations of Andrew Lloyd Webber classics.
Like many stumbling their way through the awkwardness of adolescence, Evans, a self-described “creative, imaginative, theatre-loving kid”, admits he felt the stigma of being different, and, though he says it was the reason he was teased, the drama classroom ended up becoming his safe haven. “I think in many ways, studying drama and finding my tribe in the drama classroom saved me a wee bit,” he reflects.
From reality TV to the theatre
That sense of belonging naturally led him to a career in the arts, spanning reality TV (Big Brother, Beauty And The Geek, The Traitors… the titbit that he cast Layla from Big Brother season nine particularly tickled me) to cofounding his own theatre company with his friend and collaborator Amy Ingram called The Good Room, exploring the anonymous stories of ordinary people and revealing the beauty within them. A common thread emerged in all of Evans’ work: a fascination with the complexities of human nature and emotions.
When the opportunity came to apply for the Artistic Director role at QTC, Evans called it a “nexus moment.” He’s no stranger to the company; his first work with them took place in 2000, when a 16-year-old Evans won QTC’s Young Playwrights Award for his debut titled Opening a Fuzzwollop’s Frame of Mind after being encouraged to enter by his drama teacher, Mrs Thompson. Now, 25 years on from that moment, in his inaugural season at the helm of QTC, he has one goal: to make you feel something.
The 2026 program
The 2026 QTC season is defined by four words: All Feeling. No Filter. It’s a program that tackles big ideas and even bigger emotions. What can we expect? Get ready, it’s a pretty packed list.
The Great Gatsby, in all its dazzling yet tragic glory of unrequited love and class struggles;
Torch The Place, a family intervention story about a hoarding migrant mother and her children
The Sapphires, the trailblazing First Nations story of four Yorta Yorta women performing for soldiers during the Vietnam War
Pride And Prejudice, an adaptation of the classic love story that examines family, social class, and gender roles
Do Not Go Gentle, a poignant imagining of aged-care residents as explorers on Captain Scott’s doomed Antarctic expedition
Strong Is The New Pretty, the story of the AFL women’s league and the women who refused to be sidelined
Small Mouth Sounds, an audio-immersive silent retreat satire that explores existential questions
Into The Woods, where fairytale characters confront what lies beyond the stories that were written for them.
Watch any of them – or better yet, all of them – and you’ll be met with sometimes-funny, sometimes-emotional, always astonishingly moving theatre. I ask him if there’s a particular production he’s most looking forward to, and, in true theatre-kid fashion, he laughs: “It’s like Sophie’s Choice. It’s like evicting a Big Brother contestant.”
Honesty, connection, storytelling
Beyond the programming, QTC is carrying its 2026 theme into the fabric of how the company works behind the scenes. Their collaborations with Queensland’s leading arts organisations (Opera Queensland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Brisbane Festival, and Shake & Stir Theatre Company) are built on the same values driving the season: honesty, connection, and storytelling that cuts straight to the heart.
Central to this is a deep commitment to amplifying First Nations voices, led by Head of First Nations Theatre Isaac Drandić, whose team determines their own projects. “That’s where we spend a lot of our energy – honouring the fact that the First Nations people of this country are our original storytellers,” Evans explains. “I think you can go further and dream bigger when you’re together.”
I tell Evans how, on the car ride home after attending the 2026 Season Launch, which gave a preview of all the upcoming shows, it was all I could talk about. At this, he says, “That’s what success looks like to me. I want the conversations in the cars. I want to upset your worldview, or make your heart open, or challenge you, or give you a feeling that perhaps you haven’t felt before, but you suddenly go, ‘That feels contagious.’”
With tickets now on sale for the February launch, Evans invites you to experience what he did as a child at the Lyric Theatre: a shared moment in a dark room with strangers and a story that stays with you long after the curtain call.
Imagery: Jade Ellis
