The Stage Show
Episodes
A reimagined Yentl and a play about race and privilege in education hit home for director
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl was most famously adapted into a musical film by Barbra Streisand. Now a new adaptation breathes new life into the stor...
GoPros, spray bottles and a fake language — Making theatre with The Last Great Hunt
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Last Great Hunt are a collective of Western Australian theatre makers who delight in bringing the unexpected to the stage. Now a documentary, Sta...
A gay hate crime that became a watershed moment for reform revisited in song
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972, a lecturer at the University of Adelaide was attacked at a gay beat, thrown into the River Torrens and drowned. 50 years on, Watershed: The ...
Girl from the North Country — How 'pure ignorance' of musical theatre led to a hit
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Dylan's music feels inseparable from the man himself, so how could it be adapted for musical theatre? Playwright Conor McPherson explains how his...
'We're making space for ourselves' — How Zindzi Okenyo is changing theatre
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Zindzi Okenyo has a lot on her plate. The actor, musician and Play School host is now a theatre director. Her first plays, Seven Methods of Killing K...
Youth in trouble — Chunky Move's dance for the end of days
07 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Antony Hamilton is the artistic director of Melbourne's fierce and feisty contemporary dance company, Chunky Move. His new work Yung Lung plunges aud...
Six the Musical's journey from student theatre to worldwide smash
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The all-singing, all-dancing wives of Henry VIII reclaim history in the global smash Six the Musical. We meet Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss who wrote the...
A Palawa playwright on 'the biggest issue' his people are fighting today
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nathan Maynard is one of Australia's funniest and most clear-sighted playwrights. The Palawa writer had a hit with The Season and now he's back with ...
David McAllister and Wesley Enoch start a new chapter
17 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, steals the spotlight to interview his partner, Noonuccal Nuugi playwright an...
Tom Stoppard's life examined
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare loom large in the canon of English drama. Two new books explore their lives, their work, their driving forces an...
David Williamson shares some home truths
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David Williamson is far and away Australia's most produced playwright. Now that David has retired, he looks back on his luminous career in a very can...
'Who's afraid of the truth?' — An Indigenous director tackles an American classic
27 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What can a 60-year-old play about drunk and sometimes spiteful American academics tell us about culture and race relations in Australia? Director Mar...
The room where Hamilton happened
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Meet Thomas Kail, the Tony Award-winning director of the hit musical Hamilton, whose friendship and collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda stretches b...
From the ashes — the lessons a reborn La Mama can share with Australia
13 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Live on stage at Melbourne's iconic La Mama Theatre, newly rebuilt following a devastating fire, we look at the history of independent Australian the...
Elaine Crombie will calm you down before she punches you in the guts
06 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elaine Crombie is a powerhouse of an actor and singer on stage and screen. Her new role sees her performing with Bangarra Dance Theatre in Wudjang: N...
Diablo Cody found her dream collaborator in Alanis Morissette
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill is now a jukebox musical. But how has this achingly personal collection of songs been transformed into a show ...
'Artists with disability should be treated like any other' — 30 years of Restless Dance
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When a devastating diagnosis halted Michelle Ryan's dance career, she spent ten years away from the stage, but then some giants of dance brought her ...
Dear Evan Hansen creator revives the show that came before Rent
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the writer of Rent died on the day of the show's first preview, he also left behind a little-known autobiographical musical called Tick, Tick…...
'An accident of the theatre' brought Sondheim back to Broadway
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The musical Sunday in the Park with George has been the subject of speculation ever since it opened in 1984. Some say its story reflects the life and...
How one of Australia's top directors discovered the power of telling our stories
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A common thread runs through much of Australian theatre's boldest and most influential new work: director Paige Rattray. From humble beginnings in Ta...
Why the writer of The Vagina Monologues now has climate change in her sights
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Lara Stevens' introduces us to Hartmut Veit, whose performances with coal in Victoria's Latrobe Valley spurred timely conversations with residents...
The accountant who became an opera star
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Teddy Tahu Rhodes is a stalwart of the opera and musical theatre stage, but there was a time when he thought that accountancy was his true calling. S...
What regional Australia offers artists and audiences
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tasmania's renowned contemporary dance company Tasdance is celebrating 40 years. The company's artistic director Adam Wheeler grew up in Launceston, ...
David Williamson shares some home truths
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David Williamson is far and away Australia's most produced playwright. For the past 50 years he's been writing plays at an average of one every 10 mo...
Animal Farm in the age of Trump
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Van Badham is a courageous and funny Australian playwright who, since searching for the humanity of trolls in Banging Denmark at the Sydney Theatre C...
Audra McDonald and Tony Sheldon's Broadway
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
To mark the return of theatre to New York City, Michael revisits his private tour of Broadway with Audra McDonald, then delivering her Tony Award-win...
'Fragility is okay, limits are okay' — Why the way we make art should change
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Physical theatre-maker Hanna Cormick performs her show The Mermaid wearing a bright pink and blue tail and a full respirator mask. The image reflects...
'Who's afraid of the truth?' — An Indigenous director tackles an American classic
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What can a 60-year-old play about drunk and sometimes spiteful American academics tell us about culture and race relations in Australia? Margaret Har...
Spectacular, spectacular! The music of Moulin Rouge
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Levine is the man behind the music of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The Broadway production, nominated for 14 Tony Awards, is soon to open in Mel...
Juliet Stevenson is drawn to danger
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Live on stage at last year's Adelaide Festival, we're joined by the Olivier Award-winning English star of the stage and screen, Juliet Stevenson. Jul...
Theatre dorks Zoë Coombs Marr and Anne-Louise Sarks get serious
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Incoming Melbourne Theatre Company artistic director Anne-Louise Sarks has a reputation for bringing the best out of people. She speaks about her pro...
Why Hugo Weaving and Paula Arundell act
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Hugo Weaving and Paula Arundell share the stage, magic happens — not just in performance, but behind the scenes, too. The pair have forged a s...
Kate Champion and Paula Arundell — finding family and fantasy on stage
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Straight out of drama school, Paula Arundell became a mainstay for directors like John Bell, Jim Sharman and Benedict Andrews. Now she treads the boa...
Neil Armfield and Kate Champion — dancing into a perfect partnership
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The best theatre is always the result of a great collaboration and Neil Armfield found the ideal collaborator in Kate Champion — choreographer, dir...
Mark Howett and Neil Armfield reach out to a new generation
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Armfield cut his teeth at Sydney's Nimrod Theatre Company before co-founding Belvoir, but his earliest forays into theatre-making were a way to ...
Kylie Bracknell and Mark Howett — Leading lights of the West
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We meet an artist whose canvas has been some of the world's biggest stages, but his palette is ever-inspired by Noongar Boodjar. For our next convers...
Wesley Enoch and Kylie Bracknell on language, culture and connection
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Taking on Macbeth is a mammoth task for any director but try translating and performing it entirely in Noongar. In our next conversation between lege...
David McAllister and Wesley Enoch start a new chapter
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of our conversations between legends of Australian theatre, the former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, ste...
Tom Stoppard's life examined
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare loom large in the canon of English drama. Two new books explore their lives, their work, their driving forces an...
Eddie Perfect turns introspective
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Composer and performer Eddie Perfect's Broadway adventures included some of the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Now with two Broadway cr...
For playwright Jen Silverman, theatre became the answer to any question
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
American playwright Jen Silverman is a true believer in the power of theatre. She compares her first encounters with the theatre to walking into chur...
Alan Cumming is not acting his age
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since his Tony Award-winning performance as The Emcee in the musical Cabaret, Scottish performer Alan Cumming has been increasingly enamoured of the ...
Deborah Cheetham opera heralds a new dawn
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Wadawurrung story of Parrwang, a magpie that lifted the sky to bring light to the land, is now an opera. Parrwang Lifts the Sky is by the Yorta Y...
How a dancer overcame a spinal injury to shine on the international stage
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When dancer Amy Hollingsworth was just 18, she suffered a potentially career-ending injury. Yet, she didn't just recover — she flourished. She's no...
'I had a lot of rage' — David Ireland tries to make sense of trauma with art
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David Ireland writes very funny plays that often descend into bloody chaos and despair. Most, including his controversial play Ulster American, refle...
'Bill, that's a pirouette' — William Forsythe's unconventional rise to the top
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Choreographer William Forsythe didn't take a ballet class until he was 17 years old, but he quickly built a reputation for breathing new vitality int...
Mark Ravenhill wants you to argue over his plays
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
British playwright Mark Ravenhill made a huge splash in the mid-90s with his first play, Shopping and F***ing. He's since become one of the most prod...
Joanna Murray-Smith wrestles with hedonism and history in Berlin
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith reflects on her storied career ahead of the world premiere of Berlin at the Melbourne Theatre Company and a revival of...
Mark Trevorrow on life as the Prince of Polyester, Bob Downe
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Trevorrow created Bob Downe in 1984 and the Prince of Polyester continues to reign — at this year's Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Bob Downe is br...
'It took me to some very dark places' — The tour that broke Daniel Sloss
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss has been pushing the boundaries of stand-up since he was a teenager, raising topics like toxic relationships, sexual a...
'We need to be valued' — Changing how First Nations work is made and seen
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the last decade, Widjabul woman Rhoda Roberts has been reshaping how First Nations stories are seen and heard at the Sydney Opera House. Now, as ...
A comedian with a turbulent past finds his voice in the footlights
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Twist is a comedian with a very challenging past — he was born in Rwanda as the country was being torn apart by civil war. Now he's an Austr...
The room where Hamilton happened
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hamilton is about to burst onto the Australian stage. We meet the musical's Tony Award-winning director Thomas Kail, whose friendship and collaborati...
John Bell and Shakespeare
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In One Man in His Time, the legendary Australian performer and director John Bell, now 80 years old, reflects on his own life and career — so much ...
Meyne Wyatt's star, and eyebrow, rises
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Actor and playwright Meyne Wyatt, recently named one of Time magazine's 100 emerging leaders, reflects on his life in the arts, success with the pain...