Our Company

Loose Canon was launched in 1998 by Sydney-based writer and performer Liesel Badorrek.

We started off by performing specially commissioned shows for schools in Singapore and grew to a stage where we now tour twice a year to South East Asia and the Middle East, performing a range of shows primarily for young audiences in schools but also for kids and families in local communities.

We’ve toured extensively to Singapore as well as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait. And we’ve played for all kinds of kids in all sorts of places – for disadvantaged students in run-down classrooms in Jordan all the way to the young princes and princesses in the palace of the Sultan of Brunei.

As a result, Loose Canon is uniquely skilled in performing for and working with children of various ages and from different cultural, social and economic backgrounds as well as children with limited English-speaking ability and experience of Western theatre.

Our overseas performances generally involve a compact company of up to three actors devising four different shows for each tour – a poetry and a Shakespeare show for secondary audiences and new work for primary and early childhood audiences.

We love working with kids overseas and plan to expand our international touring program over the next few years. But we’re now also focusing on sharing our work with young Australian audiences. And we’ve broadened our horizons to include public seasons of innovative children’s theatre as well as special work for festivals and events.

But whatever we do and wherever we do it, we’re always thrilled to be making a world of difference in the lives of young people.

Our Mission

To enrich the lives of children and their families by creating original and innovative entertainment for the stage, the page and the screen

Our Vision

That the intelligence, imagination and innate creativity of young minds be celebrated and nurtured by providing young audiences with access to new and inspirational forms of cultural and artistic expression

Our Values

We believe in:

deliciously eccentric and boldly unexpected entertainment for young audiences

unconventional stories with conventional frames of reference

children’s entertainment that has cross-generational appeal

drawing inspiration from vaudeville, music hall and cabaret and reinterpreting these performance styles for young contemporary audiences

focusing on script and performance rather than production design to encourage children to exercise their imaginations and create their own worlds (not applicable to published or filmed entertainment)

fostering an appreciation for the performing arts by teaching children performance skills, introducing them to a range of cultural traditions and encouraging them to create their own pieces of performance

finding and/or creating new performance spaces making our work available to children and their families across a range of media including theatre, film, television, publishing and new media

bringing together artists with different spheres of expertise to collaborate on the creation of new work

giving back to our community by presenting free performances and by fundraising for children’s groups and charities