In New York last March with our Exit the King in preview, and I received a text message from my friend Lucy Taylor, the actress who’dbeen so memorable as the lead in Company B’s The Underpants in 2003 and now lives down in the south eastern corner of Manhattan. “What’s so wonderful is not just the show, and Geoffrey, but to know that the Belvoir St corner is burning there with its own life right in the middle of Broadway.”

Lucy was acknowledging I think that Geoffrey’s performance was part of a tradition of work that has been developing at Belvoir St over our 25 years of life. Sometimes, you have to get away from something to really see it for what it is. And it was being there surrounded by the history and the energy of Broadway that we realised that we had created something recognisable, vivid and highly original. They hadn’t seen anything like it!

And I felt fiercely proud to have been a part of that tradition: that here in our theatre in Surry Hills, audiences and artists have developed together with a growing understanding of performance, and story, and the pleasurable rhythms of human communication that take place in our room.

Because 25 years ago we knew, instinctively, that this was the place – Nimrod had already shown us that – but this new experiment of Company B was wide open. And it gathered itself together and formed itself and grew almost organically trying never to deviate from its core principles, hopefully growing richer, deeper, more startling, more funny, wilder – better – along the way.

I’ve said it before but it’s all about the space. There’s something in the almost accidental, asymmetrical form of the Upstairs Theatre that has governed the evolution of the theatre within it. Intimate and epic, there is nothing that can’t be played on that stage. With its low ceiling, the acoustic is perfect for the unrhetorical sound of the human voice. Because the audience surrounds the stage, putting energy into it without squeezing it, the human body has a sculptural, dynamic power. Gesture becomes symbolic. The interplay of space, light and sound is unique. It’s why our company exists – to rise to the charge, the impressive demand of that space. And it reaches to each corner of the room – the audience connects with the actors at Belvoir St unlike any other theatre. It means somehow that every show has a cast of over three hundred participants, all breathing the same air, living in the same moment of story.

Everyone has given to this tradition – the actors, the writers, the directors, the musicians, the choreographers, the technicians, the production and administrative staff of Company B, the audience. But I wanted particularly to say the designers, from Viv Fraser and later Barry MacGregor – the architects who shaped the space –to Brian Thomson, Stephen Curtis, Bob Cousins, Dale Ferguson, Ralph Myers, Anna Borghesi, Tess Schofield, Jennie Tate, Dorotka Sapinska, Rory Dempster, Nigel Levings, Damien Cooper, Mark Howett, Paul Charlier, Steve Francis, Gabriella Tylesova, Mark Shelton, Catherine Martin, Jodie Fried, Max Lyandvert, Alan John, Jacob Nash, Nik Pajanti, Jenny Irwin – these (and many others!) have developed the aesthetic – often by taking away, avoiding the obvious or the daggy – in space, in clothes, properties, lighting and sound – uncluttered, essential, resonant – and in that way have created meaning.

Time ticks away. One of those addictive pleasures of theatre is that you can make it go tantalisingly still for certain moments – we long for those moments of clarity and we remember them. But my time here is up. It has been a great honour and privilege to be entrusted with the stewardship of Company B Belvoir for so long. Incrementally, I suppose, it’s become something of a life’s work. And having got to a place of some security, some strength, what an opportunity presents itself for the company’s artistic renewal. How great, how exciting it will be to watch that happen. What an adventure!

In the meantime, there’s 2010. I’m thrilled with the season! There’s new work from Tommy Murphy, Tom Holloway, Scott Rankin andTrevor Jamieson, along with the best of Shakespeare, Gogol, Beckett, Hare and the dazzling young Polly Stenham. There’s Lee Lewis, Sam Strong, Matt Lutton and Eamon Flack directing for Company B for the first time, as well as trusted stalwarts such as Benedict Andrews, Wesley Enoch, Wayne Blair, Scott Rankin and me …

So read on, work out your dates and book your tickets. It’s going to be a corker.

And thanks. I’ve had a ball.

Love