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Tuesday October 27, 2026 
27 October 2026
Christmas will come early this year at the Ensemble Theatre with Mike Bartlett’s hit play Snowflake. But like many Christmas celebrations, this one might be marred in family tension. We sat down with actress Claudia Elbourne, who will be making her Ensemble debut, to find out more about her career and the upcoming production.
Well before Snowflake Elbourne’s journey to the stage was almost an inevitability. “I was a rambunctious, energetic and loud child that liked talking. So my parents put me in drama class to try and give that somewhere to go,” she recalls. “I was also a massive nerd and loved reading and poetry, and I got really into Shakespeare when I was a little bit strangely young.”
Her break into performance came at age 16 when she landed the role of Juliet for a Sport for Jove production of Romeo and Juliet. The curtains have been raised and the light has shone bright ever since.
Elbourne went on to study drama, where she not only refined her skills but formed a connection that would eventually lead to the Ensemble theatre “I met wonderful Jo Bradley, who is our director, when I was in drama school… we obviously had a good time working together,” she notes. When Bradley was chosen as the director Snowflake she reached out to Elbourne for an audition.
Snowflake may be about a tense Christmas reunion, but Elbourne’s own upbringing has a more relaxed, classic Australian holiday atmosphere. “My Christmas growing up as a kid with my close family would be either camping or to the beach, it was a very Aussie Christmas! ” she says. “We just loved the family part of it and being together more than the traditional tree.”
However, a recent Christmas with her father did get a little spicy. “He had a tiny little chilli plant as our Christmas tree. His little chilies kind of made for good baubles. I was into it.”
In Snowflake, Elbourne plays Maya, a progressive minded young woman estranged from her ‘old fashioned’ minded father. Andy (played by James Lugton) prepares for a potential holiday reunion with his daughter, but family differences and a special guest might just get in the way.
“It’s not really about political disagreements. It’s actually about how we talk to each other when we disagree. The actual reason she left is because she felt that he didn’t respect her and didn’t listen to her… she couldn’t deal with that because that felt really awful.”
Despite the emotional tension, Elbourne finds her character deeply relatable and empathetic. “She’s someone that really fundamentally cares a lot. I think that is something I deeply relate to and I enjoy about her… Believing the world should be better is not a bad thing.”
Ultimately, Elbourne believes the play speaks to a universal need for compassion across generational divides: “I think there is nothing the world needs more than learning the importance of being able to communicate, especially with the people you love, in a respectful and effective way with empathy and kindness” adding the audience is “going to have to have some big feelings and big questions.”
Snowflake is will run from October 30 to November 21 with tickets and more information available at ensemble.com.au