The first production of Foreman’s work anywhere in the world since his death in 2025, PARADISE HOTEL draws on an eleven-year friendship and features original artwork by his wife and longtime collaborator, Kate Manheim.
For more than a decade, British-Australian theatre director Patrick Kennedy visited Richard Foreman in his New York loft. They talked about theatre, Kennedy’s productions and the future of the American playwright’s uncompromising work in the hands of someone other than Foreman himself.
This December, those conversations find new expression at KXT on Broadway, where Kennedy directs, designs and produces PARADISE HOTEL, his tenth production of a Foreman play.
Running 4–19 December, with previews from 4 December and opening night on 10 December, the production brings one of American theatre’s most distinctive voices to an intimate Sydney stage.
Foreman, who died in 2025, spent five decades making theatre that disrupted the habits of both performers and audiences. The founder of New York’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and a MacArthur Fellow, he created a world of startling images, fractured dialogue and sudden sensory interruptions. His productions were defined by being funny, maddening, beautiful and disorienting. Often at once.
Kennedy knew Foreman for eleven years and developed his productions with the playwright’s encouragement. PARADISE HOTEL continues that sustained engagement with his work, following Kennedy’s Sydney production of SOPHIA=(WISDOM): THE CLIFFS in 2024.
The production also features original artwork by Kate Manheim, Foreman’s wife and a defining performer in his theatre before turning her attention to visual art. Her contribution brings another of Foreman’s closest artistic collaborators into this Sydney staging.
In PARADISE HOTEL, desire promises paradise and delivers panic. A group of characters hurtles towards a mythical hotel, only to discover the brazen Hotel Fuck. Its apparent opposite, the sentimental Hotel Beautiful Roses, proves equally terrifying. Pursued by human bouquets of red roses, they ricochet between lust, romance and alarm.
Violent vaudevillian comedy, a jarring soundscape and delirious philosophical language turn their predicament into a theatrical assault on the search for satisfaction.
Kennedy says: “With his unbridled endorsement, I am delighted to present Richard Foreman’s controversial work PARADISE HOTEL in Sydney. He wanted to take a sledgehammer to theatrical convention, and I’m looking forward to smashing it to smithereens in December. I’d like Sydney audiences to walk out baffled, laughing and arguing about it.”
PARADISE HOTEL
By Richard Foreman
Directed and designed by Patrick Kennedy
Produced by Patrick Kennedy Theatre Machine
Cast: James Collins, Finn Couzner, Brock Cramond, Lucinda Jurd, Sam Martin, Luke Visentin, Seth Rafael Barrun, Zachary Bandiera-Dunn, Georgia Da Silva, Liam Dundon and Lara Kocsis
KXT on Broadway, 181 Broadway, Ultimo NSW 2007
Season: 4 to 19 December 2026
Previews 4-9 December, 7.30pm
Opening Night: 10 December, 7.30pm
Performances: 11 to 19 December, Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/paradise-hotel