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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Catherine Pryor |Timothy James
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.
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2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Catherine Pryor |Riley Mellis
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.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Cathy Pryor |Riley Mellis
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.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Cathy Pryor |Tim Jenkins
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.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Cathy Pryor |Riley Mellis
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 Hades Town 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.
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2 months ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Cathy Pryor
Actor, director and writerLeah 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 calledIs that you, Ruthie? on at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). The life of a performer on the road can be tough, but think about the partner who’s left back at home.
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2 months ago | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen |Cathy Pryor |Carey Dell
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 National Ballet of Flanders, 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?
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Feb 10, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart
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.
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Feb 3, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart |Rosa Ellen
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.
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Jan 27, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Michael Cathcart
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.
