With A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen, local theatre-maker and singer-songwriter Joshua Hinton has all the ingredients for a fresh debut. 

When his first production opens next Thursday, Josh is set to delve into childhood memories and family folklore, as well as make local theatre history by cooking live on stage at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre (IPAC).

Afterwards, he’ll share his one-pot chicken curry with the audience.

“Food, in particular, has always been my great connection to culture,” Josh says.

“It's kind of what the story is about – my search for belonging stems from food, because I love Indian food and have my whole life, and my comfort food still to this day is chicken curry.

“So it would've felt dishonest to begin the story anywhere else.”

Boost for local artists

A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen kicks off the MerrigongX performance season in 2024. The Merrigong Theatre Co. program supports local creatives to develop ideas in various ways, from funding to sharing expertise, and its live shows are a much-anticipated annual highlight.

“It's grown so much over the last few years, that program, it's really become quite an exciting thing,” says Merrigong CEO Simon Hinton.

“We've had some fantastic works come through the MerrigongX development program and find their way to either into becoming a main stage work for us or for touring and having success elsewhere.”

Kay Proudlove’s musical Dear Diary is a prime example, a 2023 smash hit that went on to tour Australia in 2024.

This year, from August 22-24, audiences can also look forward to Nathan Harrison's Birdsong of Tomorrow (“a beautiful, beautiful poetic work”, Simon says), then, opening on 31 October, Rose Maher’s The Cardinal Rules, a nostalgic piece of storytelling and reckoning inspired by a church upbringing. “The clever thing about it is that it's entertaining and sort of funny. And then, you just have those moments of going, 'Oh my god, why are we laughing?’”

Theatre in the family

Ordinarily, Simon would be a key part of the MerrigongX selection process. This year, however, he stepped back to allow artistic development manager Leland Kean and others to make decisions.

Joshua Hinton, as readers may guess, is his son.

“I really was just in and around theatre since birth, to be honest,” says Josh, who is now 25. “For as long as I can remember, I have been coming to watch shows with my dad. I mean, he's been at Merrigong since I was like five or six years old.

“One of my earliest memories is this children’s show came and I was invited up on stage and I got to be part of the show… so it really was kind of impossible for me to fall in love with anything else.”

While Simon warned him that theatre is not an easy industry to make a living in, Josh says his dad is “very supportive”, as is his mum, Shabnam Hinton, who also understands the joys and challenges of being a performer.

“She's been a singer and recorded a few albums … I’ve got a song in the show and that's where my love of singing comes from,” Josh says.

Enter the Sultan’s Kitchen

Family is at the heart of Josh’s first stage show, starting with its title.

“The Sultan’s Kitchen is an Indian restaurant in Brisbane that my mum’s mum and dad started in 1983. And then A Place in the Sultan's Kitchen was born from the show's contents being my search for place, basically – whether that be like my cultural place, whether that be my place in this world, all of those different things. It was about finding that.

“The second title, which is How to Make the Perfect One Pot Chicken Curry, came from the contents of the play, which is me cooking a curry on stage. The recipe is loosely based on one from, I call her mémé, or my grandmother, on my mum's side.

"I called her up … but unfortunately she doesn't really have measurements for anything that she puts in. So she told me kind of the contents, but it's a dash of this or it's a half a teaspoon of that, or it's a little bit of this and then 'to taste'. So, I've had to slowly figure it out as I go along.”

Josh's story is rich in symbolism. He grew up in Wollongong, but has roots twining around the world, with his mémé picking up the family's favourite curry recipe in Sri Lanka.

“She was originally born in India, but grew up, for most of her young childhood, in Iran and then later moved to India … once she got married to my grandfather, she was living in Sri Lanka for a bit and then finally came to Australia.”

On Simon's side, Josh references his grandfather, who was born in England but moved to a farm in South Africa after the Second World War.  “My paternal grandfather, who I call Poppy… I talk about some of his most formative memories as a child. Without giving away too much, he has some quite deeply shocking experiences of growing up, because he grew up in South Africa during apartheid.”

A risky business

A Place in the Sultan's Kitchen has been a part of the MerrigongX program for two years, involving 18 months of writing and rehearsing. Finally, on Thursday, August 8, it’s showtime.

“One of the greatest things to come out of this whole process is reigniting that love for theatre,” says Josh, who stopped his theatre studies when Covid hit.

Ahead of his debut at IPAC's Bruce Gordon Theatre, and using a gas burner live on stage, Josh says he’s less worried about fire than accidentally cutting himself. “I'm chopping all the onions and the potato and the chicken … but hopefully come opening I would've made it so many times, it’ll just be second nature."

It's is a neat twist on TV cooking shows Australians know and love. Where the likes of Masterchef take cooks and turn them into performers, Josh is a performer acting as a cook. 

“My final little thing to the audience is inviting them into the foyer to share the curry that I would've made pre-show, to share the curry, taste it and have a chat with me,” Josh says.

“Finding your place is something that I believe is deeply universal. So I think that there really is something for everybody in this show – please come on down.”

A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry is a 'Pay as you Feel' performance, book your seat via Merrigong's website.