The Stage Show

Your guide to what's happening on stages across the country and beyond.

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, founding artistic director of the Sondheim repertory company Watch This.

Choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer Robin Fox are partners in work and life, though they come from 'different worlds' artistically.  Their latest collaboration is the joyful The Chronicles, which follows the rhythms of a life cycle, from birth to death — or is it renewal?Eddie Perfect's Broadway musical Beetlejuice has received rave reviews for its re-interpretation of Tim Burton's classic 1988 film. Karis Oka plays Lydia Deetz and tells Michael what it's like channelling her inner Goth eight nights a week!Botis Seva is a London choreographer who dug deep into his most difficult times to create an acclaimed dance work called BLKDOG. From his start at a local youth club in Dagenham, Botis founded his own Hip Hop dance company Far From The Norm when he was still a teenager and is now bringing BLKDOG to Australia.

It's one of those roles which great actors have on their to-do list: Winnie in the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.  Winnie starts the play buried up to her waist in dirt. In Act 2 she's buried up to her neck! Acclaimed actor Pamela Rabe tell us what makes this such an iconic play and how she approached it as both co-director and star of Happy Days for the Sydney Theatre Company.In the play POV (Point of View), 11-year-old Bub directs a pair of adult actors on stage, to re-enact scenes from her life. There's a catch: it's the first time the actors have seen the script, and Bub is filming them for a documentary. This innovative work by collective re:group is all about how a kid experiences the mental illness of a parent. We chat to young actors Mabelle Rose and Edie Whitehead, who play Bub, and director Solomon Thomas.What if Celine Dion wasn't just the torch-bearing soundtrack to Titanic — but the main character? That's the premise of a hilarious musical parody called Titanique, which originated off Broadway and has since proven popular here in Australia too. A cast of 11 joins The Stage Show, led by powerhouse Marney McQueen.

What does it take to write a Tony-winning musical? Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are the friends and songwriting team behind big Broadway musicals like Ragtime and Anastasia. They're also voting members for New York City's famous theatre industry prize, the Tony Awards. They join us as Tony Awards season takes off.Back stage... The make up artist. Meet the veteran head of WHAM (that's wardrobe, hair and make-up) Fiona Cooper-Sutherland as she transforms Christine Anu into Hermes, the silver god for the musical Hadestown. Hear Michael's interview with Anais Mitchell the creator of Hadestown.In the classic play The Maids by Jean Genet, two servant sisters act out a sinister game -- playing at murdering their mistress. Then the mistress herself enters the plot. Canberra theatre company The Street is staging this absurdist and chilling drama. We hear from actors Christina Falsone, Sophia Marzano, Natasha Vickery and director Caroline Stacey. The original sound design is by Kimmo Vennonen. 

Legendary French singer Edith Piaf was a firecracker of emotion. Gutsy and seductive, while underneath -- an intense fragility. That's the legend. But what's it like to play a legend, show after show, year after year? Cabaret singer Nathalie Lermitte has been inhabiting the icon Piaf for well over a decade.Top Shelf with Josh Piterman. Josh Piterman is an Australian musical theatre star who's used to donning all kinds of masks, especially as the Phantom of the Opera on London's West End. He's also a certified meditation teacher and he's just written a self-help book, about dropping the mask and being authentic. He takes us through the music and thinkers who've changed his life.Plus — more masks!Gail Evans and Nicky Fearn are Darwin local theatre legends. Now they're presenting something completely different from their usual humorous, physical-theatre plays — Fair Punishment, a story based on a chilling, gothic Canadian novel that's  told through masked performance. We hear a reading performed by Merlynn Tong.

When Cree-Salteaux theatre-maker Margo Kane started trying out for theatre gigs in Canada in the 1970s, there were so few roles for Indigenous actors, she ended up auditioning for the same part more than once. That all changed when she wrote her own one woman show, Moonlodge that became a classic of Canadian theatre. She's in Australia to show her new one-woman show, and reflect on her career.Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was a big international hit for the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar in the 1980s. Now it's a crazy, funny, kitschy musical coming to Sydney's Hayes Theatre. We talk about the impact of the film and how director and performer Alex Berlage and Grace Driscoll are bringing it to life in 2025.New play Thirst, by Barbara Hostalek, is set in a lonely run-down country pub called The Glass Slipper  somewhere in Western Australia. The place is on its last legs. But maybe the new owners can turn it around with a high stakes karaoke night! Actors Leah Pigram, Jarrad Inman and Maitland Schnaars from Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company perform a scene.For our series Back Stage, we meet international set designer Anna Cordingley, who hand draws her designs among many other talents.

Playwright Andrea James has researched a story from the 1840s, in which colonial newspapers suggested that a 'white woman' – maybe the survivor of a shipwreck – had been taken captive by Gunaikurnai people in what is now eastern Victoria.  Andrea interrogates the legend in a riveting new play called The Black Woman of Gippsland.In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two gruelling years in Reading Gaol, for being homosexual. The experience broke his health and spirit, and towards the end of his ordeal he wrote an impassioned 80-page letter called De Profundis ('from the depths'). Acclaimed actor and singer Paul Capsis is performing the letter on stage.Athol Fugard wrote influential plays about the injustices of South Africa's racist Apartheid system on everyday people, for decades. Fugard died last month and fellow playwright and scholar Anthony Akerman tells Michael about his work and impact. 

S. Shakthidharan's last play Counting and Cracking was a massive hit, an epic tale of one Sri Lankan Tamil family and their involvement in world-change events. Now he returns with The Wrong Gods, a story about a mother and daughter in India whose lives are about to be ripped apart by industrial agriculture. Should economic growth come at the cost of a sustainable and ancient way of life? Shakthi is joined by actor Radhika Mudaliyar. In the 40 years since their history-making perfect score that earned them a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, figure skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have toured the globe presenting ice dancing spectaculars. Now, the pair plan to hang up their skates for good, following a farewell tour they are calling Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance. First broadcast November 2024.

We mark the 100th Birthday of Australia's oldest continuously run theatre — Brisbane's iconic La Boite. A little theatre that's had a huge influence on the theatre and politics of Brisbane and on building a theatre culture which is distinctively Australian. La Boite's Artistic Director Courtney Stewart and former AD David Berthold (current director-in-residence at NIDA) take us through the eras, the challenges and the triumphs.Back Stage: the lighting designer. In the theatre world, what does a lighting designer do? Richard Vabre creates night, day, inside, outside and inner psychological states, all through the use of light. Just don't give him a white wall! Richard's work can be seen in ENDGAMES, directed by Laurence Strangio.How would you create a play that a four year old could understand? How about a four month old? Sally Chance and Stephen Noonan do just that, carefully creating works of theatre for the very early years. Stephen's the Boy & the Ball is on as part of the Dream Big children's festival in South Australia. Composer of The Thing That Matters: Heather Frahn.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has taken over the city. Comedians from across Australia and around the world are here including the UK's Nicola And Rosie Dempsey, as dead-pan singing sisters Flo and Joan. This year they're also presenting One Man Musical – a musical take-down of Andrew Lloyd Webber!Producer Rosa Ellen hits the streets and meets three comedians debuting shows at MICF: the word-of-mouth hit Jin Hao Li (Swimming in a Submarine), Tik Tok pop songstress Charlene Kaye and Brisbane's queen of crowd work, Anisa Nandaula (You Can't Say That)Kayah Guenther is 31 and he has been dancing since he was a kid. Now with his sister Maitreyah Guenther he is performing in a skilful, intimate show called The Glass Child. Kayah has Down Syndrome and the performance is an exploration of their journey together and their growth to adulthood. They're joined by choreographer Kate Harman from The Farm. Music by Anna Whitaker.

John Harding, a founder of Ilbijerri Theatre Company and veteran playwright, recorded 20 hours of Taungurung elder Uncle Larry Walsh recounting his life story. The result is Lazarus, a sold-out theatre show telling a life of tragic beginnings as a stolen child, survival in institutions and fearless activism. We also hear Billy McPherson, playing Larry. Lazarus is on as part of Melbourne /Naarm's Yirramboi festival.Jason Arrow is known to many as the titular character in Hamilton where he had an extraordinary run both in Australia and internationally. Now he has put his breeches and coat tails away and has donned a 1950s dapper suit for the character of Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Opera Australia's Guys and Dolls on Sydney Harbour. He sings for us the showstopper Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat!The Player Kings is a show which takes the audience on an 8-hour journey through plays by Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that chart the rise and fall of five kings. Liam Gamble is making his professional theatre debut, alongside Emma Palmer who plays the evil Queen Margaret. Liam has cerebral palsy, and talks about playing the villainous Richard III, a character who is disabled and endures cruel treatment.

Comedian and writer Ruby Wax tells Michael about how she recently found herself in a mental health clinic, after searching for transformative experiences (like swimming with whales). So what drives her to go public about her experiences, and stay funny?Two thousand years ago and the Roman poet Ovid has been banished to live out his days among uncivilised people on the Black Sea ... The plot of An Imaginary Life by Australian writer David Malouf. Humphrey Bower is performing it as a one man play about how to live with others, and with nature. Musician Pavan Khumar Hari performs alongside. It's on as part of Ten Days on the Island festival.We chat with Australian actor Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects, Little Women), who is Cecily in a joyfully Queer production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which can be seen in cinemas as part of the UK's National Theatre Live, co-starring Ncuti Gatwa (Dr Who) and Hugh Skinner (Fleabag).

This episode of The Stage Show is about love that doesn't end well!The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold in a hit folk musical called Hadestown. It's won Tonys, Grammys and is now in Australia. We speak to the singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell, who wrote Hadestown as a concept album, before touring it around in an old bus and then turning it into a remarkable stage show with the Broadway director Rachael Chavkin.Soprano Anna Dowsley sings the gorgeous aria Ah Belinda! In  Dido and Aeneas,  the opera by Henry Purcell about another ill-fated couple from classical times. Anna reflects on her character's fate and on working with acrobats in this production between Opera Australia and Circa, the Queensland based circus company.Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters  follows the lives of  a 19th C. family who feel trapped and are hankering for something more. It continues our theme for the day of tragic love-stories. We hear from Theatre Works' new production with director Greg Carroll,  and actors Stella Carroll and Chris Connely. And globe trotting theatre critic from UK's The Stage newspaper, Richard Jordan, joins us for his highlights of the Adelaide Fringe .

Actor, director and writer Leah Purcell has been telling us her own stories and the stories of people close to her since the 1990s. Now Leah's back – as the adaptor and director of the true tale of Aunty Ruth Hegarty, which take us into the heart of Australia's post-colonial history, a powerful two-person play called Is that you, Ruthie?The life of a performer on the road can be tough, but think about the partner who's left back at home. Add a new baby to the mix and it can be challenging indeed. This was the experience of Kyle Falconer, the lead singer of Scottish band The View and his partner Laura Wilde. They tell their story in an indi musical No Love Songs. We're joined by the Australian cast Keegan Joyce and Lucy Maunder.Damien Warren-Smith is the comedian behind Garry Starr, the (increasingly nude) clown who has toured highly successful shows like Garry Starr Performs Everything, Greece Lightning and now, Classic Penguins, which won rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe and is now coming to Australia. Garry may be a buffoon, but Damien takes clowning very seriously.

We meet Irish screen and theatre actor Stephen Rea, who talks about meeting Samuel Beckett early in his career. Rea so wanted to perform Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, he had the foresight to record his youthful self reading it. In his new production at Adelaide Festival, the audience gets to hear those recordings.We head Back Stage to the hat maker's studio! In fiction there are lots of characters who are famous for their hats. Robin Hood. Sherlock Holmes.  Lady Bracknell (she needs a ridiculous hat). In our new series Back Stage, Michael meets theatre milliner Phillip Rhodes, who reveals how hats bring a character to life. Butoh is a dance form that started in Japan in the 1950s and was called 'the dance of darkness'. Dancers often wear white body paint and explore raw psychological states. But it can also be outrageous and funny, as veteran performer Yumi Umiumare tells us about her own life practising Butoh. Yumi's latest show is Butoh Bar: Out of Order II for Asia TOPA.

Shortly before he died, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performed a piano concert called Kagami – which was filmed and recorded with mixed reality technology. Thanks to that, the audience can see and hear Sakamoto play on a level of reality which pushes the boundaries of what a concert can be. Todd Eckert was a friend of Sakamoto and through his company Tin Drum, is pioneering this tech for the stage. The tragic heroine Violetta, from La Traviata, is one of the most iconic roles in opera.  Samantha Clarke is reprising her much acclaimed performance as the ill-fated courtesan for Opera Australia's La Traviata and explains why Violetta is so dear to her. She also sings the breathtaking aria Addio del passato for us, accompanied by Brian Castles-Onion.For generations, Yolngu met and traded with other seafaring people in the top end of the continent. From this, language and songs, stories and more was exchanged. Now the Yolngu songman and dancer Banula  Marika and choreographer Rachael Wallis are collaborating with First Nations artists from Taiwan, including Suming Rupi … for a show called Gapu Ngupan (Chasing the Rainbow) at Asia TOPA in Melbourne.

As a teenager in Belgium, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui  grew up dancing with his friends in the street. He's now a renowned choreographer with his own company and the director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, choreographing everything from pop music videos to the new show MANIFEST at Perth Festival - where members of the public can train alongside his dancers for a performance in the city's Forrest Place.Can love exist between two people on opposite sides of the nuclear debate? In her new play Nucleus, Alana Valentine pits two passionately engaged scientists against each other, basing their arguments on real life interviews, but adding a nuclear force of attraction into the mix. We're also joined by Peter Kowitz playing Dr Gabriel Hulst. from the funny and vernacular Palawa/Pakana playwright, Nathan Maynard. In the era of AFL footballer Adam Goodes' famous war cry, two Aboriginal footy players in a regional club confront the personal cost of either staying quiet or speaking out about racism. We're joined by the show's star, Ngali Shaw (Wiradjuri, Murawari, Kunja) and director, and co-choreographer of the show's breathtaking football sequences, Isaac Drandic (Noongar). First broadcast March 2024

Australian theatre legend Robyn Nevin is directing And Then There Were None, a classic murder mystery by Agatha Christie. She talks to Michael about the darkness in Christie's stories, her view on changing acting styles and how Robyn finds her 'inner clown'. Playwright Patricia Cornelius explains why she has five actors playing the world's most famous hacker — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in her new play TRUTH. She's joined by director Susie Dee.And you'll discover a ballet about the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Michael speaks to Australian Ballet principal artist Callum Linnane, who first danced the part nine years ago in the ballet Nijinsky.

UK director Emma Rice thinks the classic novel Wuthering Heights has many contemporary resonances, particularly around the origins of the character Heathcliff.  Rice turned the story into a rollicking play after successfully adapting other English folktales and films for the stage. She tells us about her career, which included briefly leading Shakespeare's Globe theatre before founding her own company Wise Children.Rwandan writer and director Dorcy Rugamba brings his moving theatre piece Hewa Rwanda: Letter to the absent to the Adelaide Festival. In it, he honours the family members he lost in the 1994 genocide, and the performance has a spiritual significance, accompanied by musician Majnun.Playwright Joanna Murray Smith joins actors Caroline Lee and Peter Houghton for a reading of a scene from her play Honour. Since it was first performed 30 years ago, Joanna says her perspective on the characters has changed. It's being staged at Red Stitch Theatre.

The Hindu epic Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world, a tale where gods and mortals dance around each other in stories about creation, sex, death and destruction. But can it be told in under nine hours? That was the duration of  Peter Brooks' famous 1988 production of The Mahabharata at the Adelaide Festival. Miriam Fernandes and Ravi Jain, from Canada's Why Not Theatre, have wrestled the saga into a two-part, five-hour theatrical production which includes time for a shared meal. It's headlining Perth Festival.The hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen has recently had to cancel its Canberra and Adalaide tours due to poor ticket sales, despite the show doing well in Melbourne and Sydney. Before that news broke, we recorded a song with the musical's Australian star Beau Woodbridge.Stephen Sondheim's Follies is the story of a once-famous company of American showgirls who have a reunion in the 1970s, 30 years after they last performed. The themes of age and regret require the performers to dig deep into vulnerability, says Antoinette Halloran, who stars as Sally in a new production by Victorian Opera. She's joined by director Stuart Maunder.

When director and actor Ian Michael first saw the stage play of Picnic at Hanging Rock, adapted by playwright Tom Wright, it was as a theatre attendant. Now, he is directing it at the Opera House for the Sydney Theatre Company. The Noongar theatre-maker has forged an exciting career performing deeply personal stories alongside innovative productions. His production of the gothic story of the Victorian school girls who go missing on St Valentine's Day, interrogates a colonial nightmare and its fixture in the Australian imagination.In 1954, model Shirley Beiger shot and killed her boyfriend outside the ritzy Chequers nightclub in Sydney. The case was a media sensation, especially when Beiger got off without any charges. It has inspired the cabaret A Model Murder staged inside the Darlinghurst Court House, where the original trial took place. Performers Amber McMahon and Maverick Newman give us a taste of the court action, along with writer Sheridan Harbridge.In the hit Edinburgh Fringe show, Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Samuel Barnett is a stand-up comedian regaling us at breakneck speed about his unfulfilling love life and very hectic brain. When a new and dazzling man comes into his life, everything could change, except for his new partner's extremely inconvenient medical condition... but is everything as it seems? Sam and director Matthew Xia join Michael to unpack this charismatic character, written by Marcello Dos Santos.

Over the past 200 years, theatre has often been a lightning rod for social and political upheaval in the United States. Even the plays of William Shakespeare have been the subject of violent debate. This surprising history is examined in two recent books by James Shapiro: Shakespeare in a Divided America and The Playbook.Also, we explore Bangarra Dance Theatre's first mainstage cross-cultural collaboration, Horizon. Horizon includes work choreographed by Deborah Brown, a descendent of the Wakaid Clan and Meriam people in the Torres Strait, with Moss Te Ururangi Patterson, of the Māori Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribe in Aotearoa and the artistic director of the New Zealand Dance Company.

Death is not a very funny subject. Yet, comedian, writer and musician Eric Idle has spent 60 years showing us the funny side of our all-too-fleeting lives. The Monty Python member has toured Australia with his show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! He's also written a book about the creation of his musical, Spamalot.Also, we visit Australia's Back to Back Theatre, which has been delighting audiences with shows performed and devised by an ensemble of artists who are neurodivergent or living with a disability, and Torres Strait Islander dancer, actor and theatre maker Ghenoa Gela shares the artworks that take pride of place on her Top Shelf.

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. Big Name, No Blankets from Ilbijerri Theatre Company tells their story on stage.Also, Australian writer James Elazzi has garnered acclaim for his frank and funny plays that dramatise the lives of Lebanese Australians. He has been nominated for a slew of awards in his young career, including the 2024 Martin-Lysicrates Prize. His sixth play, Karim, sees his return to the company that gave him his first big break: Riverside's National Theatre of Parramatta.

It's been 100 years since the death of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini. From La Bohème to Turandot, Puccini's operas remain some of the most popular around the world. To explore Puccini's life and legacy, we're joined by musicologist Dr Linda Fairtile and hear performances from two Opera Australia productions.Also, since Hamilton debuted in Australia in 2021, the American founding father has been played by the South African-born, Perth-raised performer Jason Arrow. He's now been in the role for longer than the show's writer and original star, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

In her memoir Oh Miriam!, the British-Australian actress, writer and comedian Miriam Margolyes shares hugely entertaining stories from her life with her trademark wit and disarming candour. This year she brought those stories — and more — to the stage, touring her show Oh Miriam! right across Australia.Former prime minister Paul Keating was one of the great parliamentary performers. His ruthless wit and self-confidence take centre stage in Jonathan Biggins' hugely popular tribute to Keating, The Gospel According to Paul. It's a role that Jonathan — an actor, singer, writer, director and co-creator of The Wharf Revue — has been performing, on and off, for five years.

Legendary photographer William Yang has spent decades transforming his photography into captivating live theatre via the medium of the slide show. In his latest performance, Milestone, which is coming to the Sydney Festival and Asia TOPA, Yang shares a lifetime of stories, from his boyhood in Cairns, to his various 'coming-outs', to the freedom — and fear — of life as a gay man in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s.Also, Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera tells the duo's dazzling story of fame and tragedy, and we meet actors Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz as they compare notes on playing the role of Hamlet.

In 1997, Australian dancer Marc Brew's life was changed forever by a devastating car accident that left him paralysed from the chest down. He tells his story in the deeply personal An Accident / A Life. Over the past 27 years, Brew has redefined the possibilities of dance, captivating audiences worldwide with performances and choreography that challenge the boundaries of the art form.On Top Shelf, actor Christie Whelan Browne shares the performances that shaped her, while mixed reality artist Troy Rainbow invites audiences to confront experiences of psychosis through his groundbreaking work.

The nine-time Tony Award nominee Bartlett Sher has this year directed Robert Downey Jr's Broadway debut and a London revival of Cole Porter's 1948 musical Kiss Me, Kate. Kiss Me, Kate is based upon Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, so how palatable is this controversial musical to a 21st century audience?Also, Wanderings is a new play that delves into the lives of a transgender son and his mother who is living with dementia, and Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County comes to Belvoir St.

Peter and the Starcatcher, by the American writer Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Water for Elephants), is a Tony Award-winning play inspired by J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stories. It reveals how Peter, the Lost Boys, and Captain Hook came to find themselves in Neverland, and it puts a new character named Molly at the centre of the action.Also, the big sound of a cappella Sacred Harp singing will ring out in an Australian theatre this month in a new play called The Hall, and we pay tribute to our recent guest Roz Hervey, who has died. Roz was a celebrated dancer, choreographer, director and, most recently, Creative Producer at Restless Dance Theatre.

Some theatre people constantly surprise you, and their names alone can spur you to buy a ticket. Sheridan Harbridge is one such artist. She blew audiences away in Suzie Miller's Prima Facie, and she's now a writer or director on four upcoming productions: My Brilliant Career, Life in Plastic, A Model Murder and Phar Lap: The Musical.Also, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs pay tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein in Showstoppers, and more than 40 years after the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfires, a community revisits the ordeal on stage in a play called Ash Wednesday. It will be read by Shane Jacobson, Pia Miranda and community members at this year's Mountain Festival.

In the 40 years since their history-making perfect score that earned them a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, figure skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have toured the globe presenting ice dancing spectaculars. Now, the pair plan to hang up their skates for good, following a farewell tour they are calling Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance.This year, one of the greatest shows on earth has been the US presidential race. The theatrics employed to shift allegiances, manipulate audiences and inspire voters call into question the line between politics and performance. The influential social and cultural thinker Richard Sennett turns his mind to these and other topics in his book, The Performer: Art, Life, Politics.

Death is not a very funny subject. Yet, comedian, writer and musician Eric Idle has spent 60 years showing us the funny side of our all-too-fleeting lives. The Monty Python member is now touring Australia with his show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! He's also written a new book about the creation of his musical, Spamalot.Also, as we, as a society, adjust to the ways in which artificial intelligence will affect our everyday lives, playwright José Rivera brings us a clever new play called Your Name Means Dream, and Opera Australia is celebrating the essential role of the opera chorus in a show called Chorus!

Mina Morita is on a mission to inspire a new crop of Australian theatre directors and to open our stages to a wider range of audiences and artists. She's in Australia to lead a program called Staging the World, and she's directing the Australian premiere season of Yoga Play at the National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre.Also, theatre maker Wang Chong's acclaimed one-man show Made in China 2.0 returns to Australia. We find out what's on his Top Shelf. And we explore the origins of Bollywood dance with Professor Pallabi Chakravorty, and Ashley Lobo, a choreographer of more than 20 Bollywood films and the director of A Passage to Bollywood at the OzAsia Festival.

The very first Australian production of the smash-hit coming-of-age musical Dear Evan Hansen has just opened in Sydney. The Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including one for the show's book writer, Steven Levenson. Steven also wrote the screenplay for Tick, Tick… Boom! — a musical film inspired by the life of Jonathan Larson (Rent). Also, Mary Coustas is the creator of the big-haired, outspoken Greek Australian Effie who first took on the world in a stage show called Wogs Out of Work in 1987. She recently revealed a new persona on stage: her own, in her one-woman show This Is Personal. Her new show as Effie, now on tour, is called Upyourselfness.

In the 1980s a young jazz pianist named David Bates ran away with a cabaret band to the other side of the world. A chance encounter with the now-iconic Spiegeltent gave him an idea — if he bought this unloved structure it had the potential to breathe new life into cabaret and variety acts for the 21st century. Bates is the creator of the legendary La Clique, which has been thrilling audiences worldwide for over 20 years. Also Harley Mann, founder of Na Djinang Circus, reveals the power of the circus to shape the way we see the world in In Place, and ABC reporter Emily Bissland swaps the newsroom for the stage — as a cast member in her town's production of Mary Poppins — to find out what makes community theatre so special.

Step into a hidden vault where the secrets of professional magicians are kept under lock and key. Your guide, magician Nicholas J Johnson, reveals the mysteries of the WG Alma Conjuring Collection, exploring why we're so captivated by illusions—even when we know it's all a trick.Also, we explore how Patrick White's suburban satire A Cheery Soul resonates in 2024, and what would the music of rule-breakers such as Cleopatra, Frida Kahlo and Cathy Freeman sound like?

Do you remember your last day of high school? It's a key moment for many of us, as we step out of our teenage lives and into the world of adulthood. Matthew Whittet's play Seventeen explores this transition in a unique way that has transfixed audiences around the globe.

Roz Hervey has enjoyed a 30-plus-year career as a dancer, choreographer, director and producer. So, how does she respond when life throws her a challenge which will certainly bring those adventures to a halt? In the face of a recent diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), Roz has continue throwing all of her energies into the arts.Also, we ask the multi-award-winning English director and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, choreographer of a new ballet inspired by Oscar Wilde, which works of art most inspire him, and we celebrate 60 years of the Australian Ballet School with the school's new director Megan Connelly and one of the school's most famous graduates, Graeme Murphy. 

Over the past 200 years, theatre has often been a lightning rod for social and political upheaval in the United States. Even the plays of William Shakespeare have been the subject of violent debate. This surprising history is examined in two recent books by James Shapiro: Shakespeare in a Divided America and The Playbook.Also, Trent Dalton's Love Stories, based on conversations with strangers on a Brisbane street corner, comes to the stage at this year's Brisbane Festival, and we pay tribute to the Australian playwright Jack Hibberd (Dimboola; A Stretch of the Imagination) who has died at the age of 84.

The American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks started writing plays on the advice of a very famous mentor: the celebrated writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin. Suzan-Lori won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog, a revival of which also won a Tony Award. It's now on stage in Australia for the first time.Also, Marina Prior and Michael Cormick, two superstars of Australian musical theatre, hit the highway with their Centrestage tour, and while many artists are sounding alarm bells about artificial intelligence, choreographer Alisdair Macindoe is embracing it. In Plagiary, Macindoe hands the role of choreographer to an algorithm.