Doré
Immersive couture performance | Completed and presented 2026 | Director / Co-writer
A 50-look fashion-turned-theatre production that transforms a circular runway into a descent through the nine circles of hell. Drawing on Gustave Doré’s illustrations of Dante, Milton and Poe, the work combines couture, movement and scenographic design to make garments and bodies carry the psychological weight of limbo, desire, greed, violence and treachery.
Presentations
Eight-look preview, The Frontier, Australian Fashion Week, Wharf 2 Theatre at Sydney Theatre Company, 12 May 2026
Full 50-look presentation, Mothership Studios, Marrickville, 16 May 2026
The full independent presentation attracted more than 300 attendees.
The Void
THE VOID
Ready-to-wear presentation | Completed and first presented 2025 | Director
An intimate runway presentation staged inside a Federation-era home in Sydney’s north. Working within a tightly controlled black-and-cream palette, The Void distils Paris Jade Burrows’ couture vocabulary into a made-to-order wardrobe of everyday costumes, positioning dress as armour, character and a conversation between designer, maker and wearer.
Presentation
Private industry presentation, PJB Studio, Sydney, November 2025
The work was subsequently released as the label’s Ready-to-Wear 2026 collection.
It’s Real if it Bleeds
IT’S REAL IF IT BLEEDS
Couture performance | Completed and presented 2025 | Director
A politically charged, 30-look couture performance about war, power and the bodies placed at risk for systems that do not care for them. Drawing on Bertolt Brecht’s epic-theatre conventions, it combines runway structure, live performance and music to turn a fashion presentation into a call for political and emotional reckoning.
Presentation
Off-schedule Australian Fashion Week presentation, St Barnabas’ Church, Ultimo, 10 May 2025
The work was performed by 25 models before an audience of approximately 370 people.
Dracula
Dracula- Theatrical performance at NIDA 2020
Written and Directed by Samuel Lucas Allen
A 21st-century bastardization of Bram Stoker's horror classic Dracula, asking: who is the real monster of this story?
Featuring a condensed cast and a brutally modern aesthetic, this provocative show declares that monstrosity is a matter of perspective. It jumps, shifts, and shimmies through the points of view of three human characters as they encounter a supernatural and seemingly monstrous outsider. They, and you, are challenged to ask: what is good? What is normal? And what is monstrous?
Wake in Fright
Wake in Fright - Theatrical performance at NIDA 2018
Inspired by the cult classic, Wake In Fright is the story of an arrogant white man, who trapped in the country town of the Yabba, is destroyed but the Outback and Himself.
This adaptation of the classic Australian story of the same name was Written and Directed by Samuel Lucas Allen and exists entirely in the mind of the protagonist and outsider Grant. The story is told through an expressionist lens where the world shifts and warps depending on this characters emotional state. We see the world as Grant does, we his mind twist warp and shatter onstage.
Blood Wedding
Blood Wedding - Theater at Monkey baa theater 2017
A staging of this classic, surreal tragedy by Federico García Lorca, produced in association with Tough Kids Productions and Backstage.
This work was described as “proof that young theatre makers in this city have the passion and ability to make rework relatively unknown shows into greatness that can reach expansive audiences and journey further into the darkness of human souls than other productions would dare… director Samuel Lucas Allen did a remarkable job” (Sabrina Stubbs, Theatre Now Sydney).
