A new play based on the life of Australian tennis champion and Wiradjuri woman Evonne Goolagong Cawley will take centre court at Melbourne Theatre Company next year — literally: the Southbank theatre will be transformed with stadium-style seating banks on either side of the stage.

"That was her language, that's how she expressed herself — it [the production] just had to be on a tennis court," says writer and director Andrea James.

Her play Sunshine Super Girl (named after a nickname given by fans) will chart the life of Australia's first Aboriginal woman world champion — from growing up in the country town of Barellan, New South Wales, where she improvised with a wooden-crate-slat and ball, to winning Wimbledon (twice), and through her retirement from the court, subsequent move to the United States, and return to Australia in 1991.

In 2012, Cawley established the Evonne Goolagong Foundation, which encourages Indigenous kids to take up tennis. ( ABC News: Rani Hayman )

"It's one of the greatest Australian stories," says MTC artistic director and co-CEO Brett Sheehy, recalling how he "teared up and got covered in goosebumps" reading James's script for the first time.

James, who describes herself as "a total tennis tragic", remembers watching Goolagong on TV in the 1970s and 80s.

"It was just so wonderful to see a black woman on the television — and sadly, very rare."

Her interest in telling Goolagong's story on stage was spurred when she was gifted a copy of the tennis champion's autobiography.

"I couldn't put it down — it was so full of drama and pathos and politics. And there was so much about her story that I didn't know about — and that I don't think Australia knows about.

"There was a whole lot of really interesting behind-the-scenes things that were going on that … really spoke to what Australia was at that time — and really, what it is now."

Andrea James is a playwright of Yorta Yorta and Gunnaikurnai descent, best known for Winyanboga Yurringa and Yanagai! Yanagai! ( Supplied: MTC )

Australian voices

Sunshine Super Girl is one of five new Australian works in MTC's 2020 season.

Four of these have come out of MTC's Next Stage writers program, a five-year, $4.6 million development initiative launched in 2017 that bore fruit on the main stage this year with Anchuli Felicia King's Golden Shield (currently playing at Southbank Theatre).

In 2020, Next Stage alumni Benjamin Law (The Family Law), Dan Giovannoni (Cut Snake), Joanna Murray-Smith (Switzerland) and Aidan Fennessy (The Architect) will present plays developed through that program.

Law, making his playwriting debut in MTC's 2020 season, says Next Stage has been vital to the development of his comedy Torch The Place, about a family who come together around their "hoarder" matriarch.

Benjamin Law is a Queensland-born, Sydney-based writer, journalist and screenwriter. ( Supplied: MTC/Daniel Francisco )

"It's a cliche, but time equals money … and we've been well-resourced, and given the time to develop the plays properly. I know from other people who work in the theatre that that is not always the case."

Other key aspects of the program for him were access to writers like Leah Purcell, Joanna Murray-Smith and Patricia Cornelius (also in the program), rigorous workshops, and the public "work in progress" readings of his play.

"It was really great and gratifying to get that immediate public response."

He says Torch the Place is partly inspired by his parents, and weaves important and timely issues of consumerism, real estate and mental health into a family comedy.

From left to right: Michelle Lim Davidson, Diana Lin (The Farewell; The Family Law) and Fiona Choi will star in Torch the Place. ( Supplied: MTC )

A sixth work, David Williamson's Emerald City (a co-production with Queensland Theatre), brings the total Australian content in MTC's 2020 season to 50 per cent.

Australian Plays at MTC in 2020 Torch the Place by Benjamin Law

Torch the Place by Benjamin Law Emerald City by David Williamson

Emerald City by David Williamson Berlin by Joanna Murray-Smith

Berlin by Joanna Murray-Smith Slap. Bang. Kiss by Dan Giovannoni

Slap. Bang. Kiss by Dan Giovannoni The Heartbreak Choir by Aidan Fenessy

The Heartbreak Choir by Aidan Fenessy Sunshine Super Girl by Andrea James

Williamson's Sydney-set comedy, first at MTC in 1987, sets the story of a screenwriter and his book publisher wife against a backdrop of real estate fetishes and rising consumerism.

"It's even more pertinent today," says Sheehy.

A number of West End and Broadway hits pad out the line-up: a co-production with Sydney Theatre Company of the musical Fun Home, based on the memoir by American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel (best known for Dykes to Watch Out For); Dennis Kelly's dark one-woman drama Girls & Boys (acclaimed in both New York and London); and Laura Wade's Olivier Award-winning comedy Home, I'm Darling.

Former artistic director Simon Phillips, responsible for some of MTC's biggest blockbusters since leaving the helm (including Shakespeare In Love, Twelfth Night and North by Northwest) will direct a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, featuring new music by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall (Muriel's Wedding The Musical).

Lisa McCune (left) will star in Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home. ( Supplied: MTC/Justin Ridler )

Sunshine Super Girl

Taking the coveted "feelgood" end-of-year slot at MTC, Sunshine Super Girl will open November 20, 2020.

"It's such a good news story," says playwright Andrea James. "We hear all of the awful stuff, you know, we hear about Aboriginal people being pushed out on the fringes — and her family were: before they moved to Barellan they lived in a dirt-floor tin shack on the side of an irrigation channel.

"But when they moved to Barellan, the whole town could see just how much talent she [Evonne] had, and they all really got behind her."

Goolagong Cawley won 14 Grand Slam titles over her career. ( AAP: National Portrait Gallery )

James said Goolagong's early life had lots of "you can't write that" moments of serendipity that appealed to her as a playwright: "It felt like a beautiful unfolding of fate."

She also had her share of hard times, including leaving Barellan and her family aged 14, to train in Sydney; navigating, as a public figure, the Indigenous activism of the 1970s and community expectations; and dealing with the gender bias of the media and sporting world when she retired in 1983 to focus on family.

James consulted with Goolagong and her husband Roger Cawley over aspects of the script, and spoke to family members, friends, and townspeople from Barellan.

She says that returning to the Goolagongs' home country was also "very important to me as an Aboriginal theatre maker," of Yorta Yorta and Gunnaikurnai descent.

"Her country really speaks to who she is today and why she was able to do what she was able to do," says James.

"So it was really important to seek permission to walk on to that country and, you know, sit by the river there and visit the spot that her mum and dad used to fish, and where they used to camp, and all those things."

From small companies to the main stage

Sunshine Super Girl would not be on a main stage next year without the support of its far smaller producing company: Performing Lines.

Melbourne Theatre Company artistic director Brett Sheehy approached Performing Lines executive producer Marion Potts to see if they had anything that might work for his mainstage.

At that time, James's work had just had its first workshop — and Potts sent the script to Sheehy to read. He did so in one sitting — though he also says: "Frankly, Marion had me when she first said 'Evonne's story'."

Brett Sheehy and Melbourne Theatre Company executive director and co-CEO Virginia Lovett. ( Supplied: MTC/Jarrod Barnes )

A former director for three of Australia's five state-based international arts festivals (Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival and Melbourne Festival), Sheehy says he has worked many times previously with Performing Lines — though never before in his capacity as artistic director of one of the country's major performing arts companies.

He says companies like MTC and Performing Lines are part of "an ecology that is completely interdependent, and artists should move from one platform to the other".

The ecology has been affected by federal funding cuts to the Australia Council in recent years, passed on largely to the small-to-medium sector.

Asked if he could feel the pipeline from the independent and small-to-medium sectors contracting in recent years, Sheehy said "absolutely".

"And that's why it's imperative that those of us who have jobs like mine, where there's some security, champion and work with the independent and small-to-medium landscape whenever we can. Our future is dependent on it.

"The artists who will be on Melbourne Theatre Company stages in ten years or 20 years … would be working in the independent and small to medium sectors [now]."

"So, you know, we only survive by the existence of an incredibly healthy overall ecology."