The Stage Show

Live on stage at the 2024 Perth Festival, we encounter an opera, a play and a dance work that each explores how the places where we live shape who we are. We're joined on stage by Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse, composers of the new Noongar-language opera Wundig wer Wilara, Dalisa Pigram, Soultari Amin Farid and Zee Zunnur, co-creators of Mutiara, a dance work that investigates the complex history o...

The last production to grace the stage of Griffin's historic SBW Stables Theatre before a major redevelopment will be The Lewis Trilogy from Australian playwright Louis Nowra. The three highly acclaimed plays — Summer of the Aliens, Così and This Much Is True — are all drawn from Nowra's own very eventful life. Also, Jonathan Larson's hit musical RENT is back on stage in Australia, and ahead of tw...

In Jungle Book Reimagined, the celebrated choreographer Akram Khan brings Rudyard Kipling's classic and contested Jungle Book stories into a near-future world torn apart by the impacts of climate change. But with the original stories rooted in colonial perspectives, why revisit them a century later to tell a story of displacement amid environmental collapse? Also, the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner'...

Tim Minchin has written the music and lyrics for Groundhog Day the Musical, which is coming to Australia following runs on Broadway and the West End.  In the 1993 film, Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman, Phil Connors, who finds himself living the same day over and over. But with each repeated day, Phil learns a little more about himself and the people around him. Who better to wrestle with these e...

What happens when we see real events and meet well-known people on stage? How can the theatre shape our sense of our own history? Those questions are raised by a new Australian play called Sunday. It features a knockout performance from Nikki Shiels as the famous Australian arts patron Sunday Reed. Also, Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage is renowned for her incisive, moving and witty plays about...

Joanna Murray-Smith is an acclaimed Australian playwright and one of the few to have enjoyed success on Broadway and the West End. She joins us to reflect on her storied career and recent work. Also, Stephen Schwartz thought that he had left Broadway behind when he had a chance encounter with a novel called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Wicked became his most successf...

Tina Turner's phenomenal success in the 1960s and 70s masked the destructive tempest of her personal life. Now, her powerful story is laid open in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. It features Tina's hits with a book written by the Pulitzer and Olivier Award-winner Katori Hall — a renowned chronicler of the black experience in the American South. Also, what happens when opera and circus meet? In 2019...

Heather Mitchell's mainstage debut was more than 40 years ago and she continues to delight audiences, last year performing to full houses at the Sydney Theatre Company in the one-woman show RBG: Of Many, One. This year, Heather published a memoir called Everything and Nothing. Also, imagine a world with no Macbeth, no Tempest and no Twelfth Night. Without the First Folio, published 400 years ago t...

Have you ever wondered how a musical is written? At this year's Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the Tony-nominated composer and lyricist Eddie Perfect hosted an event that brought us into that process. Eddie and another musical theatre composer, Gillian Cosgriff, share their insights and debut brand new songs in our music studio. Also, Richard Mills' forthcoming opera Galileo explores the life of the p...

Nellie Small was a mainstay of the Tivoli circuit in Australia from the 1920s until her final performance in 1964. There was a catchcry on the variety circuit: if your show was falling flat, send for Nellie. Largely absent from our performing arts history books, Send for Nellie at the Sydney Festival thrusts Nellie Small back into the spotlight. Also, a new Australian production of Death of a Sale...

In the desert town of Papunya in 1981, four blackfellas and a whitefella bonded over rock 'n' roll and became the history-making Warumpi Band. The Warumpis were the first rock band to sing in Aboriginal languages. Now, Big Name, No Blankets from Ilbijerri Theatre Company will tell their story on stage at the Sydney Festival. Also, the American dramatic soprano Lise Lindstrom shares the works that...

Richard Wagner's massive Ring Cycle consists of four heroic operas that tell stories from ancient Nordic sagas. But what would happen if you shifted the tale to an imaginary cosmos closer to our own? That is the question raised by an epic new production from Opera Australia which draws on imagery from Asia and the Pacific. Also, Moulin Rouge! The Musical is theatre at its most spectacular and dyna...

A Tony-award winning production of A Christmas Carol has returned to Australia, this time with the Welsh actor Owen Teale as Scrooge. A Tony winner himself, best known for playing Alliser Thorne in Game of Thrones, we learn about Owen's very unconventional path to becoming an actor.  Also, the American playwright and drag icon Charles Busch has inspired a generation of artists with his outrageous...

Sisters Hayley and Mandy McElhinney are two of Australia's finest stage and screen performers. Having built their careers as individuals, they now join forces for their playwriting debut. The pair have written and will star in Dirty Birds at the Black Swan State Theatre Company — a strange, funny and moving portrait of two women trying to find their place in the world. Also, the plight of asylum s...

We continue our journey into the life and work of Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever made. We are joined by performer Philip Quast, authors Joanne Gordon and Robert L McLaughlin, directors of several Sondheim productions Dean Bryant and Sonya Suares, and we speak with the New York Times' chief theatre critic Jesse Green about Here We...

Stephen Sondheim is the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever made. We delve into his life, work and impact on the form. We hear archival interviews with Sondheim himself and are joined by performer Philip Quast, author Joanne Gordon (Art Isn't Easy: The Theatre of Stephen Sondheim), director of several Sondheim productions, Dean Bryant, and Sonya Suares, fou...

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb's creative partnership lasted forty years and produced hit shows like Cabaret, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Since Ebb's death in 2004, John Kander — now 96 years old — has continued making new work. With Chicago back on stage in Australia, John Kander joins us from New York.  Also, we travel to Moscow to encounter the devil and his gang of misfit...

In traditional Weitou culture (the first people of Hong Kong), brides defiantly sing of grief and bitterness towards their arranged marriages. Drawing on these folk songs and her own Weitou heritage, Rainbow Chan has written The Bridal Lament — a new song cycle coming to this year's Liveworks and OzAsia Festivals.  Also, Paradise or The Impermanence of Ice Cream is inspired by Parsi sky burials wh...

Whether he's playing, conducting, orchestrating or composing, Alex Lacamoire is a musician in demand. He has won three Tony Awards for his orchestrations (In the Heights, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen). On the new Sadler's Wells dance work Message in a Bottle, Alex's palette is the iconic music of Sting. Also, how does a musical theatre performer bring their A-game to eight shows a week? We ask two o...

The new work, Bark of Millions, features 55 original songs that explore queer life and culture.

Nakkiah Lui (Kamilaroi/Torres Strait Islander) is one of Australia's most incisive, provocative, and funniest writers. Never one to follow convention, when she was asked to consider adapting a 'classic', Nakkiah Lui chose the divisive 90s Hollywood flop, Showgirls. Blaque Showgirls is now on at the Griffin Theatre Company. Also, Sandaime Richard, a Japanese play inspired by Shakespeare's Richard I...

Choreographer and dancer Dalisa Pigram is a Yawuru/Bardi woman and the co-artistic director of the acclaimed dance company Marrugeku. Dalisa is the winner of the 2023 Creative Australia Award for Dance. The prize was announced this week as part of ABC Arts Week. Also, ahead of the opening of her show Mutton is the New Lamb — a trans de-mythology, Julie Peters brings in her photo album to discuss m...

Cessalee Stovall is an in-demand performer and the founder of the organisation Stage a Change. When Cessalee is not on stage herself, she is driving opportunities for artists of colour working in the performing arts. Over a pot of tea, Cessalee and Stéphanie discuss the organisation's efforts — and spill some tea in the process. Also, playwright Hilary Bell shares the works that have most inspired...

As new parents, Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall found themselves immersed in an uncanny world of children's entertainment. The impossible chirpiness of the singers made them wonder: what struggles lurk behind those bright eyes? Those musings have inspired their new musical comedy Bananaland. Also, Stephen Schwartz thought that he had left Broadway behind when he chanced to encounter a novel ca...

On the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain is a deeply spiritual place called Yuldi Kapi, or Ooldea Soak. It's the electrifying starting point for the bold new work from Bangarra Dance Theatre called Yuldea. It's choreographed by Bangarra's new artistic director, Mirning woman Frances Rings. Also, Mary Coustas is the creator of the big-haired, outspoken Greek Australian Effie who first took on the...