Stephen Noonan
Stephen is a performance maker with a diverse practice working in the Theatre for Early Years field. He makes high quality and meticulously crafted original work.
Stephen Noonan
Stephen is a performance maker whose practice spans theatre, dance, circus and puppetry.
Since graduating from the University of Adelaide, Australia, he has built a career defined by an enduring curiosity about what performance can do for audiences who exist at the edges of conventional theatre, the very young, the isolated, the overlooked.
Since 2019, his primary focus has been Theatre for Early Years (TEY), making work for children aged six months to four years. He makes work for this age group because he can genuinely respond to, and be shaped by, the cognitive and emotional world of very young children.
As co-creator and performer with Sally Chance Dance, Stephen has been central to a body of TEY work that includes This [Baby] Life, Nursery, Touch & Go, Seashore and The Thing That Matters, all of which have been presented in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Scotland, India and New York.
From 2019 he began working with The PaperBoats, touring their inaugural show Especially on Birthdays across Adelaide, regional South Australia, and the 2019 American Theatre for Young Audiences National Conference and Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 2022, in partnership with The PaperBoats, Stephen created the Boy & the Ball, a theatre work for four-year-old audiences that has since toured Australia, the U.S.A., Cuba, Italy, Serbia and Malta. In 2023 it received the Ruby Award for Outstanding Work, Event or Project for Young People from Arts South Australia, recognising artistic excellence in the state. In 2024 it won the Adelaide Fringe, Frank Ford Award and in 2026 had a sold out season on Broadway at New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
His performing life has taken him across a wide terrain. He has collaborated and performed with Sally Chance Dance, The PaperBoats, Restless Dance Theatre, Patch Theatre, PVI Collective, Vitalstatistix, State Opera of SA, Yashchin Company, Men of Steel, para//elo, Unreasonable Adults, Dance Exchange, Soft Crash, KneeHIGH, Slack Taxi and Outlet Dance Company, and has performed in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, France, Scotland and Denmark.
Some of his most formative work came early. In 2000, Stephen received the Australian Government Centenary Medal for his performing arts work in the Woomera Detention Centre and across the Anangu Pitjantjatara Aboriginal Lands Schools, work that continues to resonate as a statement about what performance is actually for.
In 2003 he undertook an Asialink performing arts residency at the Hong Kong Arts Centre.
Stephen was the inaugural winner of the Dame Ruby Litchfield Scholarship for young artists, which took him to the Dell'Arte School of Physical Theatre in California in 1994–95. That physical training remains a foundation of his practice, deepened over the years through masterclasses with Nigel Jamieson, Min Tanaka, Linda Wise, Barrie Kosky, The Roy Hart Centre, The Flying Fruit Fly Circus and the National Institute of Circus Arts.
Beyond his own practice, Stephen has taught drama and dance in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Sweden, and for organisations including Flinders University, Adelaide College of the Arts (TAFE SA), Back to Back Theatre, Restless Dance Theatre, Riverland Youth Theatre, Cirkidz, Urban Myth Theatre and Kurruru Indigenous Youth Performing Arts.
He has served on assessment panels for Creative Australia, Create SA and Carclew Youth Arts.
His independent work has been supported by Creative Australia, Create SA and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.