Marian St Theatre for Young People

MSTYP has been connecting young people to transformational theatre experiences since 1969 and is one of Australia’s oldest continually running children’s theatres. We proudly make work by and for young people.

We believe that participating in and making theatre and live performance has the power to transform lives and experiences and allow young people to see their world in a different way. We would like to to see as many young people exposed to and participating in the live arts as we can.

MSTYP has been creating work in a hyper local way based in classic children’s stories since its inception and has a strong presence on the north shore of Sydney. We have reached over 300,000 young people as audience and makers and delivering over 4000 performances since our inception.

We have three key objectives
1) Provide exceptional training and engagement opportunities for young people
2) Facilitate theatre work driven by the ideas of young people
3) Create and present high quality, original work for young audiences representative of our community

Each year we present a new main-stage work as well as youth driven and youth led theatre.

In the past five years we have commissioned or created new works such as, Maya and the Sea Dragon (written by Wendy Blaxland as part of MSTYP’s 50th Birthday), Nelly the Very Curious Elephant (by Ekatarina Kats), Testament and in 2021, Red Dust, as well staging existing work Pearlie in the Park (by Wendy Harmer) and creating an immersive world Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales.

One of our key strategic objectives coming out of the pandemic is to increase the reach of the company both in Sydney as well as regionally and nationally and our current works are a first foray into greater participation in the wider Australian arts ecology. By producing new work we will better serve the young people we engage and the diverse community we operate in.