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 two new productions of Candide in Melbourne and Adelaide, we take a closer look at Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta based on the Enlightenment-era novella by Voltaire.

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's Ring Cycle is one of opera's most demanding. It requires a dramatic soprano voice with extraordinary power and maturity and is rarely tackled until a singer is well into their career. To learn more, we're joined by our ABC Top 5 resident, mezzo soprano Katrina Waters, who is investigating the mid-career transitions of female dramatic voices.

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 existential themes in musical form than the always philosophical Tim Minchin?

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 the intersections of race and class in America. The playwright joins us to reflect on her storied career and how her work taps into larger political conversations. This year, the Sydney Theatre Company will stage her play Sweat.

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 successful show and it is now back on stage in Australia.

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, Opera Queensland and Circa, teamed up to reinterpret Gluck's 18th century opera Orpheus & Eurydice. The project was led by Patrick Nolan, the artistic director of Opera Queensland and Yaron Lifshitz, the artistic director of Circa. Now that production is coming to Opera Australia.

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 this year, those plays may have been lost to history. To celebrate the anniversary, Bell Shakespeare presented three plays from the First Folio in their 2023 season.

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 pioneering Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. Performed by Victorian Opera, Galileo will have its world premiere at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. Richard joins us at the piano to share stories from his own life as a composer.

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 Salesman has enticed Anthony LaPaglia back to the stage for the first time in over a decade, and we learn how, after being a flop in its native Russia, Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker became a permanent fixture of the Christmas season at ballet companies everywhere.

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 have most inspired her journey as an artist on Top Shelf and we mark 100 years of radio in Australia and reflect on RN's role in creating great radio drama and developing some of Australia's best-known theatrical talent.

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 dynamic — so, how do they do it? We go backstage with their technical director, Richard Martin. And we meet some dedicated volunteers from The Rondo Theatre, home of the Cairns Little Theatre, which turned 70 this year.

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 writing and iconic performances. The first production from the Australian company Little Ones Theatre was Psycho Beach Party and their last will be Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. We're joined by Charles Busch and Little Ones co-founder Stephen Nicolazzo.

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 seekers involved in a 2010 maritime disaster that left 50 people dead has inspired This Rough Magic — a new, dreamlike play that weaves their story into Shakespeare's The Tempest. And we take a walking tour of London's famous theatre district, the West End, with theatre producer and columnist for The Stage, Richard Jordan.

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 Are, Sondheim's posthumous final musical.

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.

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 misfits wreaking havoc among the literati of Stalinist Russia. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote the novel The Master and Margarita in the 1930s when he was fed up with seeing his books and plays banned by Russian authorities. Now, Belvoir St Theatre are adapting this unwieldy novel for the stage. 

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 where the dead are consumed by vultures, theatre maker Wang Chong shares the work on his Top Shelf, and we delve into the ABC archives to encounter the construction and opening of the Sydney Opera House 50 years ago this week.

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 of the hardest working performers on the Australian stage, and we learn about a fan-led project to bring Star Trek to audiences with a vision impairment which has now inspired a new work from Chunky Move at the Melbourne Fringe.

Many who attended Taylor Mac's epic 24-Decade History of Popular Music will tell you that it was a life-altering experience. The 24-hour performance told a moving, open-eyed version of American history through 240 years of song. Taylor's new project, Bark of Millions, features 55 original songs that explore queer life and culture.  Also, Claude-Michel Schönberg, the French composer behind the megahit musicals Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, shares his Top Shelf and we discuss the man Leonard Bernstein called 'the greatest cultural force in the 20th century': Elvis Presley. A new musical, Elvis: A Musical Revolution, charts the singer's meteoric rise.

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 III, was radically transformed by the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen in a 2016 production that brought together performers from across Asia. Now, Keng Sen is revisiting the text with a troupe of students at NIDA.

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 making art from life, and Mary Finsterer, one of Australia's most widely performed composers, guides us through her creative process.

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 her journey as an artist on Top Shelf and the disability-led performing arts festival Undercover Artist returns to Brisbane, but who is an 'undercover artist' and how and why does this festival blow their cover?

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 called Wicked. The composer-lyricist behind Godspell and Pippin had recently won three Academy Awards for his screen work, but the prospect of adapting Wicked drew him back to the stage. Now, Wicked is back.

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 world in a stage show called Wogs Out of Work in 1987. She went on to star in the comedy series Acropolis Now and Mary Coustas continues to perform as Effie in stand-up. Recently, Mary has revealed a new persona on stage: her own, in her one-woman show This Is Personal.

To break the mould of traditional opera, composer David Lang takes us to unexpected places. He has written an opera that is too quiet to hear, an opera for 1000 singers performed over a one-mile stretch and in The Little Match Girl Passion he substitutes the suffering of Jesus with the suffering of the young girl dying in the cold in Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairy tale. Also, choreographer Stephanie Lake gets dancers to perform with a kind of joy and discipline which would hold the attention — and the wonder — of anyone. Since forming Stephanie Lake Company, she has become one of Australia's most exciting and popular choreographers. Her acclaimed work Manifesto will soon have a return season at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Debra Oswald was just 17 years old when her first play was professionally workshopped. That was in 1977 and she's been a prodigious writer of plays, television and novels ever since. But her path has not always been easy and her story is laid bare in her one-woman show Is There Something Wrong with That Lady? Also, we hear a scene from the new play at Queensland Theatre, Don't Ask What the Bird Look Like, which takes us into the world of a young Aboriginal woman reconnecting with her father after a very long time away from country, and for National Science Week, we delve into the science of sound and find out more about the role of sound design in theatre.

Helen Morse has performed in some of the most radical and feted Australian theatre productions of the past 50 years. As she prepares to feature in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Caryl Churchill's play Escaped Alone, Helen reflects on her five decades in Australian theatre. Also, we hear a scene from Cactus, an acclaimed new Australian play about two teenage girls facing challenges that neither are yet prepared for, and we discuss the future of NICA, the National Institute of Circus Arts. Its parent university, Swinburne, has "paused" enrolments and is reassessing whether NICA aligns with its strategic priorities.

Death of a Salesman by the American writer Arthur Miller is one of the 20th century's most famous plays. It's about an ageing travelling salesman who discovers late in life that he is entirely expendable. A new production in Australia has enticed Anthony LaPaglia back to the stage for the first time in over a decade. Also, the 1913 murder of a 13-year-old girl in the American South and the anti-Semitic fervour it whipped up has become the improbable subject of a hit musical called Parade, and the community arts company Everybody NOW! has created a music theatre work inspired by local roller skaters for this year's BLEACH* festival on the Gold Coast.

Caryl Churchill is one of the most enduring and radical playwrights of our time. Several of her plays are now in production around Australia. To unpack the politics and theatrical risk-taking of Caryl Churchill, we're joined by experts, creatives and performers immersed in her work. Also, the sumptuous American musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 was a sensation in New York, where it was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. It's based on a tale of seduction and betrayal from Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. It's now on at Sydney's Darlinghurst Theatre Company.

Ash Flanders made his reputation with wildly funny, often surreal queer theatre made under the name Sisters Grimm with his creative partner Declan Greene. Now, Ash has put the glitter and wigs aside and written a new, naturalistic play called This Is Living. Also, multidisciplinary artist and "radical mischief-maker" Candy Bowers shares the works of art that have most inspired her journey on Top Shelf and we explore the themes of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Fleet Street with the Sydney Opera House cast.

Australian writer Michelle Law has an ear for the humour found when cultures meet. Her new play Miss Peony takes us into the world of Chinese-Australian pageants in which young women compete to be the one who most embodies Chinese values. But who decides what those values are? Also, we meet the organisers of Club Broadway, a pop-up party that features nothing but show tunes, and we discuss 'mad scenes' in 19th century opera with the Australian soprano Jessica Pratt. What do they tell us about the attitudes and the politics of the time? Mad Scenes with Jessica Pratt is coming to the Sydney Opera House.

Guest host Wesley Enoch meets three icons of First Nations performing arts. Roxanne McDonald's stage career began more than 30 years ago when she saw an audition flyer for a play based on the poetry of Oodgeroo Noonuccal. She has since graced some of Australia's biggest stages. Also, we meet Noongar elder Richard Walley, who has made enormous contributions to Australian performing arts, from directing and acting in a range of new theatre works to twice performing for Queen Elizabeth II, and we learn about Con Colleano, a tightrope walker known as the Wizard of the Wire. Under the big top, he claimed Spanish ancestry, but Con was a Kamilaroi man, born and raised on Bundjalung country.

The English writer Michael Frayn has produced a staggering amount of journalism, novels, philosophy, non-fiction and plays. The Tony and Olivier Award-winning writer of Benefactors, Noises Off and Copenhagen celebrates his 90th birthday this year. Also, in the regional Victorian town of Camperdown, a local theatre company has endured for 75 years. We drop by the town's historic Theatre Royal to attend their sold-out 75th Anniversary Spectacular and meet the dedicated community members keeping the Camperdown Theatre Company alive.

The American composer Mary Rodgers was a funny, frank and intelligent woman who grew up in a world of showbiz royalty. But as an artist, she could never shake free of the shadow of her famous father, Richard Rodgers. She tells her life story in Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, co-written by Jesse Green. Also, after four years on stage, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will soon take its final bow in Melbourne. It is Australia's longest-running play, with more than one million tickets sold and more than 1,000 performances. For its entire run, Harry Potter has been played by Gareth Reeves. He joins us with fellow performer Natasha Herbert and executive producer Michael Cassel.

Andrew Bovell is one of Australia's most esteemed playwrights. His recent play Things I Know to Be True has been staged around the world, but in many ways its spiritual home is Western Australia where Andrew grew up. It was the place he was drawn back to when writing the script. Also, playwright Joanna Murray-Smith shares the works of art that have most inspired her creative journey on Top Shelf and we hear a scene from Underneath Ms Archer, a two-hander written and performed by two stalwarts of the Australian stage and screen: Louise Siversen and Peter Houghton.

Have you ever wondered how a musical is written? At this year's Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the composer and lyricist Eddie Perfect is hosting an event that brings us into that process. Eddie joins us with Gillian Cosgriff whose new musical The Fig Tree will have a work-in-progress showing at the festival. Also, in Patricia Cornelius's play Do Not Go Gentle, now on at the Sydney Theatre Company, we are out on the Antarctic ice with Robert Falcon Scott on his fateful expedition of 1912. But in this play Scott and his team are all in their 80s and we soon realise that nothing is what it seems.

Jacky is the Melbourne Theatre Company debut of Arrente writer Declan Furber Gillick, a razor-sharp new voice in Australian playwriting. It tells the story of Jacky, an enterprising Aboriginal man forced to confront the true cost of his labour. Also, the Adelaide Festival Centre turns 50 this year. In 1973, it was Australia's first multi-purpose arts centre and a symbol of the city and the country's commitment to the performing arts during that era. We reflect on the building's storied history and future ambitions.

David Finnigan outraged the right-wing commentariat with his breakthrough play, Kill Climate Deniers. Now he's back with another play that confronts audiences with the urgent challenge of climate change: Scenes from the Climate Era. But why does climate action remain a niche topic on our mainstages? Also, The Lucky Country is a new Australian musical at the Hayes Theatre which digs into the rich and complex variety of Australian life, and The Australian Ballet is presenting a new double-bill of Australian work under the title Identity. So, how long have Australian identities and Australian stories been featured in mainstream ballet?

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, The Darlinghurst Theatre Company's sell-out production of the romantic musical Once returns to play its biggest stage yet and we learn about a new play from Northern Ireland that sheds light on the private struggles of young people in out-of-home care.

The Poison of Polygamy is an action-packed Australian novel that was serialised in 1909 in a Chinese-language newspaper — the heroes and villains are all Chinese migrants making a new start in Australia. So how does this novel challenge or enrich our sense of our own colonial past? Also, Opera Australia are bringing Philip Glass's Satyagraha to the stage for the first time in the company's history. It's inspired by the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Tenor Shanul Sharma and conductor Tahu Rhodes join us in the music studio to share their insights into Glass's beguiling score.

Heather Mitchell's mainstage debut was more than 40 years ago and she continues to delight audiences, last year performing to full houses in a one-woman show at the Sydney Theatre Company. Now, Heather has written a very tender memoir called Everything and Nothing. Also, we hear the opening scene of Pony, a frank and funny play about the wild ride of pregnancy and childbirth, and we mark the passing of improvised theatre pioneer Keith Johnstone with Lyn Pierse, author of Improvisation: The Guide, and Adam Spencer, host of the upcoming TheatreSports All-Stars at the Sydney Comedy Festival.

With comedy festivals around the country at full sail, Lano and Woodley are having a whale of a time in their new show, Moby Dick. Colin Lane and Frank Woodley join us to reflect on 30 years of their famous partnership. Also, Tina Arena is one of our most successful musical exports. Last year she flexed new creative muscles as the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and in 2023 she joins a collective of past directors curating this year's festival.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage is renowned for her incisive, moving and witty plays about the intersections of race and class in America. Her Tony-nominated Clyde's was the most-produced play in the United States last year and its Australian premiere is now coming to the Ensemble Theatre.  Also, Driftwood the Musical tells a true Australian story of a family's escape from Nazi-occupied Europe, and Lara Ricote, a Mexican-Venezuelan-American comedian living with a disability, questions the labels placed upon on her in GRL/LATINX/DEF. 

Not long ago, Liz Kingsman was doing improv and sketch comedy with her friends in England. Now, this Sydney-born comedian is the talk of the comedy world. She's taken her universally acclaimed satire One Woman Show to the West End, it's now on at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and her next stop is New York. Also, Berlin art rocker siblings Otto and Astrid from Die Roten Punkte go solo together in Otto and Astrid's Joint Solo Project and Circus Oz return to the stage for the first time since 2021 when the company was threatened with closure.

The Australian Ballet have brought their iconic production of Don Quixote, choreographed by and originally starring Rudolf Nureyev, back to the stage. Nureyev's production became a film in 1973 which has inspired new designs by one of our most venerable stage designers, Richard Roberts. Also, Richard Wagner's epic four-opera Ring Cycle comes to regional Australia for the very first time and includes a concert held in a gold mine, and we meet 'the mother of African contemporary dance,' Germaine Acogny, the co-founder of the famous Ecole des Sables in Senegal.

Lucy Guerin is one of the most awarded choreographers working in Australia today. To mark 21 years of her company Lucy Guerin Inc, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) will host NEWRETRO — a massive durational performance installation. Also, we examine the well-established trend of choreographers presenting contemporary dance in galleries and museums and ask: How does our relationship to dance change when it's not experienced in a theatre? And ahead of the return of Madama Butterfly to Sydney Harbour, we meet Brian Castles-Onion, the conductor of every Handa Opera in the series' 11-year history.

Great performers, writers and directors emerge from the smallest of theatres — venues where new talent is nurtured and writers and performers are free to learn the ropes and take risks. Liz Jones AO has been making that kind of theatre happen at La Mama for over 50 years. Now she is passing the torch. Also, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Tony Award-winning masterpiece Into the Woods returns to the Australian stage and we learn all about the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt who is being portrayed on the Melbourne Theatre Company stage by Kate Mulvany in the new play Bernhardt/Hamlet directed by Anne-Louise Sarks.

Imagine a world with no Macbeth, no Tempest and no Twelfth Night. Without the First Folio, published 400 years ago this year, those plays may have been lost to history. To mark its anniversary, Bell Shakespeare is presenting three plays from the First Folio in their 2023 season, starting with a new production of Macbeth directed by the company's artistic director, Peter Evans.  For further insight into the publication and importance of the First Folio, we're joined by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford. She's the author of Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book.

After several years of delays, the Ballett Zürich production of Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem will feature at this year's Adelaide Festival. Brought to life by 36 dancers and over 170 singers performing with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, we meet the show's award-winning choreographer Christian Spuck. Also, the oldest theatre on mainland Australia hosts a thoroughly modern makeover of Hansel and Gretel written by Lally Katz, and Australian Dance Theatre Artistic Director Daniel Riley pays tribute to his great-great uncle Alec Riley in Tracker, a co-production with Ilbijerri Theatre Company co-written by Ursula Yovich.

Ivo van Hove is renowned as one of the most innovative — and divisive — theatre directors working today. The Belgian's enthralling stage adaptations of classic works consistently subvert expectations. Now, van Hove's adaptation of the confronting novel A Little Life is coming to the Adelaide Festival. Also, a married lesbian couple with two children face divorce in Blessed Union, a new comedy at Belvoir, and Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the longest-running play on London's West End, is touring Australia. But is it a paragon of modern theatre or a tourist trap?

We celebrate Sydney WorldPride with cabaret performer and drag artist Reuben Kaye. In his breathlessly entertaining shows, Kaye shares his family's extraordinary story of survival and how the arts carried him through trauma — all while singing up a storm. Also, the Hayes Theatre Co revive Gentleman Prefer Blondes — but how is it a queer story? And we consider the evolution of queer performance through the years. In an era of increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ rights, how does queer storytelling maintain its vitality?

This year's Perth Festival takes us to the stars, with many events in the program inspired by stories of the cosmos. The West Australian Symphony Orchestra's concert Music of the Spheres included music from Australian composer Richard Mills' forthcoming opera Galileo, inspired by the life of the pioneering Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. Also, Aboriginal dreaming stories inspire bold new theatrical work being staged under — and among — the stars, and Palawa writer Nathan Maynard and Māori writer Jamie McCaskill take us on an adventure across the sea and through the stars and spirit world in Hide the Dog.

Roald Dahl's beloved novel Matilda was brought to glorious life as a stage musical in 2010 and now it is on screen, once again buoyed by the clever, funny, moving songs by Tim Minchin. Also, we revisit our conversation with another talented West Australian: the writer and actor Kate Mulvany. Kate will soon star in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Bernhardt/Hamlet.

What happens when we see real events and meet well-known people on stage? Can the theatre shape our sense of our own history? Those questions are raised by a new Australian play called Sunday, featuring a knockout performance from Nikki Shiels as arts patron Sunday Reed. Also, we're joined by the writer of Sunday, Anthony Weigh, to discuss what responsibilities artists have to truth and accuracy in stories based on actual events, and we continue our discussion of Australian history and theatre with the writer of a new play inspired by the shocking true events that rendered an Australian town uninhabitable.

If you've seen a performance by Bangarra Dance Theatre in the last 12 years, then you've seen the work of Jacob Nash. Jacob is Bangarra's head of design and he has created the dazzling sets for every Bangarra show since 2010. He is also a key creative force at the Sydney Festival. Also, we hear a performance from the new opera The Priestess of Morphine, based on the life of Baroness Gertrud von Puttkamer who wrote lesbian erotic poems in the early 1900s under the pen name Marie-Madeleine, and we learn about the overlap between theatre and philosophy in Ancient Greece and a new playwriting competition that considers the absence of women in Greek philosophy.

Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Kip Williams' production of The Picture of Dorian Gray starred Eryn-Jean Norvill in all 26 roles and incorporated video screens to spectacular effect. Now, Williams has brought another classic to the stage: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Also, Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera and Cats were all produced by the same man: Cameron Mackintosh. In Australia for the opening of a new production of Mary Poppins, Cameron shares his journey from humble beginnings to producer extraordinaire.

Suzie Miller was a lawyer before she became a playwright. Now, Prima Facie, a play that takes her back to the courtroom, has launched her career on the West End and Broadway. Also, experimental theatre-maker Robert Wilson transports audiences into an almost trance-like state of stillness. His Moving Portraits invoke a similar sense of stillness and theatricality.

Our oldest modern dance company, the Australian Dance Theatre, has been delighting and challenging audiences for nearly 60 years. Now Wiradjuri dancer and choreographer Daniel Riley is at the helm, becoming the first Indigenous man to lead the company. Also, Larrakia founder of the NT Dance Company, Gary Lang, shares what's on his Top Shelf and after wowing audiences at the Royal Albert Hall and The Metropolitan Opera in New York, Australian soprano Helena Dix is back on home soil.

As the ABC celebrates its 90th birthday, we delve into our archives to revisit key moments in Australian performing arts history. Highlights include Laurence Olivier on tour, Nureyev and Fonteyn dancing into Australian hearts and Indigenous theatre taking centre stage. Also, Ian McKellen makes his Australian debut, Dorothy Hewett revolutionises Australian playwriting, Philip Glass writes a piece for organ and didgeridoo and Joan Sutherland records a stupendous La Traviata in a 17th-century Italian theatre.

Dancers Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo travelled great distances at a very young age to join The Australian Ballet. Here in Australia, they’ve risen to become award-winning artists and principals at the company — but they also found each other, beginning a fairy-tale romance and inspiring each other to new heights. Also, in 2002, John Waters' brash and big-hearted musical comedy Hairspray was adapted for the Broadway stage. It won eight Tony Awards, including one for its director Jack O'Brien. Twenty years on, Jack is at the helm of a new revival here in Australia.

Welsh stage and screen star Michael Sheen is in Australia to perform in a new production of Peter Shaffer's classic play Amadeus and the Sydney Opera House. He's taken on the powerhouse role of Mozart's bitter and vengeful rival, Antonio Salieri. Also, at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre, two new plays ask probing questions about what the Christmas message of generosity and hope means in an era of division, recession and climate change, and Jesus returns to earth as a transgender woman in the one-person play The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven.

Performer James Thiérrée takes audiences into surreal worlds that leave us pondering some big questions about life on Earth. As the son of two pioneers of contemporary circus and the grandson of Charlie Chaplin, it's no wonder James sees the world differently. His latest mind-bending work of physical theatre is called Room. Also, Richard Jordan drops by to share the story of an actor who once starred in two productions simultaneously at London's National Theatre and we're joined by the author of Verdi, Opera, Women, Susan Rutherford, to discuss what women in the 19th century might have thought of La Traviata's ill-fated courtesan protagonist, Violetta.

Classical repertoire dominates Australian ballet seasons, but in the mid-20th century, new work was a key priority for Australian ballet companies. What has become of these works? Our Top 5 Arts resident Yvette Grant introduces us to the prolific choreographer Laurel Martyn (1916-2013) and we learn about Yvette's own mission to resurrect forgotten Australian ballets. Also, to mark Barbra Streisand's 80th birthday, some of our favourite musical theatre performers are joined by symphony orchestras around the country for a celebration of Barbra's most memorable songs and we look at how Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker — now 130 years old — came to become a fixture of the Christmas calendar after having little impact in its native Russia.

British director Laurence Connor has a knack for knowing what audiences want. He has directed or revived some of the most successful musicals ever produced, including a hit new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's first musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Also, the Australian comic opera Love Burns by Graeme Koehne and Louis Nowra is revived by the State Opera of South Australia, and we meet Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Johnston, writer of First Casualty at Queensland Theatre, to find out what compelled the veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan to bring the brutality and complexity of war to the stage. 

Danish-British writer and comedian Sandi Toksvig has written books, plays, musicals, and she's the host of the ever-popular British quiz show QI. She is now touring Australia with her show Sandi Toksvig Live — an evening of comedy and stories from her extraordinary life.  Also, we hear a scene from The Mentor, a new Australian play about an ageing star who begins tutoring a young actor, but personal and generational tensions soon boil over, and we learn about Takatāpui — a blistering one-person show from Māori artist Daley Rangi about the routine violence so many gender-nonconforming people face.

S. Shakthidharan's new play for Belvoir St Theatre, The Jungle and Sea, adds dimension to his award-winning epic, Counting and Cracking. The Jungle and the Sea also builds on Shakthidharan's deeply held belief that the arts, and theatre in particular, can unite communities.  Also, Emilia Bassano pursued a career as a poet during William Shakespeare's time and a new play commissioned by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre argues that The Bard may have plagiarised Emilia's own work, and to mark the 100th anniversary of The Waste Land by TS Eliot, Identity Theatre will bring Eliot's multi-layered lament to the stage.

To ring in the holiday season, an award-winning production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is in Australia from London's famous Old Vic Theatre. It's directed by Matthew Warchus, who is also the director of Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda.  Also, we gather the cast of Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical in our music studio to perform the big act one finale and we meet Alon Nashman, a Canadian theatre-maker who has just returned from treading the boards at a theatre festival in Ukraine.

Choreographer Stephanie Lake gets dancers to perform with a kind of joy and discipline which would hold the attention and the wonder of anyone. She currently has work on the way for the Sydney Dance Company, Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Festival, and even more in the pipeline. Also, a company of dancers from war-torn Ukraine are now in Australia with a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Adelaide's Restless Dance Theatre, which creates work by dancers with and without disability, take their collaboration with Chunky Move, Rewards for the Tribe, to the UK.

In the 1980s, Annette Shun Wah was at the cutting edge of Australian radio and television and was one of the first Asian Australians to host her own show. Now Annette is empowering a new generation of creative Australians at the OzAsia Festival. Also, we meet a martial arts performer who tells her life story in an explosively physical theatre show called Action Star, and to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Black Theatre, we ask five First Nations artists what the next 50 years might have in store.

For nail-biting drama and spectacular performances, many Australians head to a different kind of theatre: the footy field. Andrea Gibbs' debut play, Barracking for the Umpire, unites her passion for the arts and AFL and asks important questions about how much we sacrifice for the love of the game.  Also, we speak with Patrick Livesy about Naomi, Patrick's one-person verbatim play about their mother's suicide and we head to Red Stitch to hear a panel discussion about change, activism and the arts as part of their season of Jeff Stetson's play The Meeting.

Dancers Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo travelled great distances at a very young age to join The Australian Ballet. Here in Australia, they’ve risen to become award-winning artists and principals at the company — but they also found each other, beginning a fairy-tale romance and inspiring each other to new heights. Also, Broadway's longest-running show The Phantom of the Opera will soon give up the ghost, and ahead of a new Australian production, we ask Agatha Christie biographer Laura Thompson why The Mousetrap — the longest-running play in London — endures.

Les Misérables opened on the West End in 1985 and is still running, making it London's longest-running musical. It's by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, who are in Australia to present a concert of their best-loved songs performed by the crème de la crème of musical theatre. Also, Maori man Rodney Bell (Ngāti Maniapoto) traces his journey from butcher and rugby player to celebrated dancer and wheelchair user in Meremere and Broadway performer Nikki Snelson guides young performers to new heights in the University of Adelaide's production of Legally Blonde the Musical.

We pay tribute to Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Yorta Yorta actor, writer and activist and elder Jack Charles who has died at the age of 79. Also, Stephen Karam's Tony Award-winning play The Humans is now a film, directed by the playwright himself, and we unpack Charles III's first speech as king, a tribute to his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, which ended with a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In his 50-year career, English writer David Hare has written more than 30 plays. His latest, Straight Line Crazy, features a powerhouse performance by Ralph Fiennes as the autocratic American road builder, Robert Moses.  Also, experimental theatre-maker Robert Wilson transports audiences into an almost trance-like state of stillness. His Moving Portraits now on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia invoke a similar sense of stillness and theatricality.

If the border closures of the last two years have a silver lining for Australian artists and audiences, it must be the renewed focus on Australian work at our capital-city arts festivals. This year's Brisbane Festival demonstrates what that kind of investment can achieve, with an array of world premieres gracing the city's stages, including Holding Achilles, Tiddas, Slow Boat and Othello.

An operatic adaptation of Hamlet by the celebrated Australian composer Brett Dean this year made its North American debut at the famous Metropolitan Opera in New York. Brett joins us to reflect on his career and the challenge of bringing Shakespeare’s famous Dane to the opera stage. Also, we hear a scene from Dorr-e Dari, a celebration of love expressed in poetry, music and stories drawn from the Persian-speaking world and we delve into the golden age of radio drama with Peter Philp, author of Drama in Silent Rooms: A History of Radio Drama in Australia from 1920s to 1970s.

Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Kip Williams' production of The Picture of Dorian Gray starred Eryn-Jean Norvill in all 26 roles and incorporated video screens to spectacular effect. Now, Williams has brought another classic to the stage: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Also, Elena Kats-Chernin's opera Iphis gets a timely revival by Lyric Opera in Melbourne and we chart the rise of the First Nations theatre company Ilbijerri as they continue their 30th birthday celebrations.

In 2002, John Waters' brash and big-hearted musical comedy Hairspray was adapted for the Broadway stage. It won eight Tony Awards, including one for its director Jack O'Brien. Twenty years on, Jack is at the helm of a new revival here in Australia. Also, award-winning playwright Christopher Chen shares his Top Shelf ahead of the Australian premiere of his play Caught and theatre-maker Elnaz Sheshgelani transforms Hamlet using the ancient Persian performance style Naghali.

After wowing audiences at the Royal Albert Hall and The Metropolitan Opera in New York, Australian soprano Helena Dix is back on home soil to sing the challenging title role of Lucrezia Borgia. Also, Arts Minister Tony Burke is taking submissions and holding town hall meetings across the country to inform the Government's new National Cultural Policy and economist David Throsby and Nyoongar/Yamatji curator Clothilde Bullen share their perspectives on what the arts sector needs right now.

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 about an American family coming apart at the seams? We ask the show's Oscar and Tony-winning writer, Diablo Cody. Also, we meet Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss who wrote Six the Musical for the Edinburgh Fringe as students and have since opened the show on Broadway and the West End and won a Tony Award.

Catherine McClements has transformed into a vast range of characters during her celebrated career on stage and screen. So, with each role, where does that act of transformation begin? We find out as she prepares for the new laugh-out-loud comedy, Chalkface. Also, Larrakia founder of the NT Dance Company, Gary Lang, shares what's on his Top Shelf and we examine the role of the dramaturg with Chris Mead, head of theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts and author of Wondrous Strange.

Suzie Miller was a lawyer before she became a playwright. Now, Prima Facie, a play that takes her back to the courtroom, has launched her career on the West End and Broadway. Also, we visit a regional theatre to meet the young locals preparing for a production of Annie Jr.

Darren Yap has been a part of some huge moments in Australian performing arts history, from acting in Miss Saigon to being on the directorial team for the Sydney 2000 closing ceremony. Now he's using his talents to bringing new Asian Australian work to the stage. Also, we meet artists behind a surge of Asian Australian plays on our mainstages right now and Neil Armfield joins us to pay tribute to the English theatre director Peter Brook, famous for his reinvention of contemporary theatre.

Our oldest modern dance company, the Australian Dance Theatre, has been delighting and challenging audiences for nearly 60 years. Now Wiradjuri dancer and choreographer Daniel Riley is at the helm, becoming the first Indigenous man to lead the company. Also, we meet the winner of this year's Keir Choreographic Award, Tra Mi Dinh, and Wesley Enoch's joyous musical The Sunshine Club returns to the Queensland Theatre stage after 23 years.

As the ABC celebrates its 90th birthday, we delve into our archives to revisit key moments in Australian performing arts history. Highlights include Laurence Olivier on tour, Nureyev and Fonteyn dancing into Australian hearts and Indigenous theatre taking centre stage. Also, Ian McKellen makes his Australian debut, Dorothy Hewett revolutionises Australian playwriting, Philip Glass writes a piece for organ and didgeridoo and Joan Sutherland records a stupendous La Traviata in a 17th-century Italian theatre.

A Strange Loop has won Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical at the 75th Tony Awards. This funny and challenging metafictional musical is inspired by the experiences of its writer, Michael R. Jackson, who joins us from New York. Also, we're joined by the chief theatre critics at the New York Times and the Guardian for the latest from the US and UK and we meet director Max Webster, the man behind a daring new Henry V starring Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones) and soon in cinemas.

Since starting her career on Young Talent Time, Tina Arena has become one of our most successful musical exports, having sold over 10 million records worldwide. She's now flexing new creative muscles as the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Also, we meet the students and two high-profile alumni creating new work at The Australian Ballet School and we learn about a new study that suggests job insecurity and other factors may be adversely affecting the mental health and wellbeing of performing artists.

After being cancelled in 2020 and 2021, Melbourne's RISING festival is finally here. It's the first major arts festival the city has hosted since 2019. We venture into the frosty night air to discover how this festival tries to subvert expectations and capture new audiences. We meet the artistic directors, watch passers-by become part of the action in The Invisible Opera, meet ordinary people rehearsing for a massive dance work, encounter new work from Marrugeku and examine social taboos with choreographer Mette Ingvarten.

Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical theatre star — and two-time Disney Princess — Lea Salonga rose to international fame for originating the role of Kim in the stage musical Miss Saigon. She retraces her journey into the spotlight and struggles along the way. Also, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson explains how she helps actors to find their character's voice and the prolific, 'critic-proof' composer Frank Wildhorn reflects on his long career and best-known work, including Jekyll and Hyde and Bonnie and Clyde.

Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera and Cats were all produced by the same man: Cameron Mackintosh. In Australia for the opening of a new production of Mary Poppins, Cameron shares his journey from humble beginnings to producer extraordinaire. Also, Anna O'Byrne shares songs and stories inspired by her work with Julie Andrews and we interrogate the Cinderella story with performers from a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella and Windmill's radical reinterpretation, Rella.

When Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai theatre-maker Andrea James quit her job as a legal secretary to pursue a career in the arts, it was because she saw the theatre as 'a place where truth gets told.' She is now one of our most celebrated playwrights and directors. Also, we hear a scene from A Letter for Molly, the debut play from Brittanie Shipway at the Ensemble and Dr Ana Flavia Zuim, co-author of a study measuring vocal demands in musical theatre, explains why technique may not be enough to protect our vocal health.

Geraldine Turner has been a mainstay of the stage since the 1970s, featuring in the Australian premieres of Chicago, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods and more. Now she's written a memoir, Turner's Turn, about her performing life and a very painful personal life. Also, the cast of Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country perform for us and we ask Australian Musical Theatre Festival artistic director Tyran Parke and headliner Philip Quast why Launceston is the ideal place for musical theatre tragics to gather.

Richard Wagner's epic fantasy opera Lohengrin is a fairy-tale romance, but a disconcerting German nationalism lurks beneath its surface. French director Olivier Py confronts the opera's complexities head on in his upcoming production for Opera Australia. Also, we trace the influence of theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski and his impact on modern acting and theatrical storytelling with Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury).

Red Stitch Actors' Theatre has just 80 seats, but the company is acclaimed for their bold programming of the buzziest new work from abroad and for developing new Australian plays. Now in its 21st year, we meet their artistic director Ella Caldwell. Also, Kaitlin Tinker summons the strength of Alien heroine Ellen Ripley in her play about pregnancy and childbirth, Earthside, at the Blue Room, and we take a closer look at Hamlet with two high school students and members of the current Bell Shakespeare production.

At this year's Australian Playwrights' Festival, writers gathered to interrogate some of the most challenging questions facing theatre-makers today. We hear two panels from the festival about the craft and responsibilities of writers telling other people's stories. Panellists: Tommy Murphy, Angela Betzien, S. Shakthidharan, Alana Valentine, Stephen Sewell, Vanessa Bates, Dylan Van Den Berg and Andrew Bovell.

Dan Giovannoni is a prolific writer of plays for young people and adults. His work as a playwright and as a teaching artist demonstrate his belief in how creativity can change the world. Dan has new plays at Barking Gecko and the Melbourne Theatre Company. Also, Maree Johnson, Broadway cast member of Phantom of the Opera now performing on Sydney Harbour, shares her Top Shelf and we explore the 'repertory theatre' model that has inspired Belvoir's rep season of plays by Caryl Churchill and Alana Valentine.

Tchaikovsky's opera about a blind princess, Iolanta, raises challenging questions about the nature of disability — questions the West Australian Opera confronts head on in a new production reimagined with members of the blind and vision-impaired community. Also, we hear two Sri Lankan Australian brothers debate 'wokeness' in a scene from the new comedy Stay Woke and we pay tribute to the theatre director and arts leader Andrew Ross, director of pioneering works by Aboriginal writers Jack Davis and Jimmy Chi.

Colin Lane and Frank Woodley are having a whale of a time in their new show, Moby Dick. The pair join us to reflect on forming their famous duo, forging separate paths and then discovering that neither of them had quite as much fun without the other. Also, we meet comedians readjusting to life on the road in 2022, check in with theatre companies impacted by the recent floods and congratulate Bruce Gladwin, artistic director and co-CEO of Back to Back Theatre, on the company's International Ibsen Award.

George Gershwin's An American in Paris has been associated with dance ever since it inspired the 1951 Gene Kelly film, so who better to bring it to the musical theatre stage than the renowned ballet dancer, choreographer and now director Christopher Wheeldon. Also, with several Australian companies currently presenting works by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, we learn about the lives of these two men and their belief in the revolutionary potential of the theatre.

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 story. It's directed by Gary Abrahams, who is also at the helm of Admissions at the Melbourne Theatre Company. Also, playwright and Blak & Bright Festival Director Jane Harrison curates a session of monologues by First Nations writers and Voice and Text Coach at the Sydney Theatre Company Leith McPherson shares tips on how an actor's voice can supplement their income.

The Last Great Hunt are a collective of Western Australian theatre makers who delight in bringing the unexpected to the stage. Now a documentary, Stage Changers, offers candid insight into their process as it follows the company creating their most ambitious work. Also, we visit a hip hop dance school breaking down barriers for young people who want to dance, and we meet Carla Stickler, a performer turned software engineer who during the Omicron wave found herself back on Broadway in Wicked after seven years away.

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 Death of Dr Duncan shines a light into this appalling story and how his death changed Australia. Also, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson shares more insights into the power of voice and we attend the rehearsal of a reimagined version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland presented by the Australian Contemporary Opera Company.

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 dark and dreamy Girl from the North Country convinced Bob that he was the man for the job. Also, Dean Bryant, the director of Fun Home, shares the Best Advice he was ever given and Judith Lucy and Denise Scott are Still Here and heading out on the road.

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 Kylie Jenner and Orange Thrower, are bitingly honest portrayals of growing up black in predominantly white communities. Also, when Kim Crotty couldn't be with his sons, he wrote them stories instead — 47 of them. These stories are shared in a new play at this year's Perth Festival called The Smallest Stage — a play that also reveals the reason for their separation: Kim was in prison.

Antony Hamilton is the artistic director of Melbourne's fierce and feisty contemporary dance company, Chunky Move. His new work Yung Lung plunges audiences into a restless and menacing dance party held in the midst of a world in crisis. Also, WA musician and playwright David Milroy shares what's on his Top Shelf and we meet Jules Allen, a youth support and mental health care worker (and former MasterChef contestant) who can now add 'funny and searingly honest playwright' to her CV.

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 show for the Edinburgh Fringe as students and have since opened the show on Broadway and the West End. Also, we discover the close connection between William Shakespeare and two terrorists whose names you're sure to know: Guy Fawkes and Osama Bin Laden. We're joined by Dr Islam Issa, author of Shakespeare and Terrorism.

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 At What Cost? A play that explores the thorny issue of who decides who can claim Aboriginal heritage. Also, how are theatres coping with surging COVID cases? We check in with Belvoir, Opera Australia and Global Creatures (Moulin Rouge), and we hear a scene from And She Would Stand Like This, a play described as Greek tragedy meets Paris Is Burning.

The former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, steals the spotlight to interview his partner, Noonuccal Nuugi playwright and director Wesley Enoch. Also, Yorta Yorta composer and singer Deborah Cheetham talks about the making of her opera Parrwang Lifts the Sky, based on the Wadawurrung story of the magpie who brought light to the land.

Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare loom large in the canon of English drama. Two new books explore their lives, their work, their driving forces and their impact on theatre.

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 candid memoir called Home Truths (HarperCollins), in which he throws open the doors to his writing room and takes us inside.

What can a 60-year-old play about drunk and sometimes spiteful American academics tell us about culture and race relations in Australia? Director Margaret Harvey shares her bold vision for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Also, we hear a performance from Black Brass, inspired by stories of resilience from Perth's African communities and we meet some of the real-life people whose generosity inspired the hit musical Come from Away.

Meet Thomas Kail, the Tony Award-winning director of the hit musical Hamilton, whose friendship and collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda stretches back twenty years. And Justin Levine, the man behind the music of the big winner at this year's Tonys: Moulin Rouge! The Musical — now on stage in Melbourne and heading to Sydney in May.

Live on stage at Melbourne's iconic La Mama Theatre, newly rebuilt following a devastating fire, we look at the history of independent Australian theatre and its impact on our culture, and we discuss the path ahead for small theatres in the wake of the pandemic.

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: Not the Past — a co-production with the Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Festival. Also, we're joined by Bangarra's artistic director Stephen Page and his recently announced successor Frances Rings and we visit Australian artists from Circa currently navigating a tangled web of border closures and health measures on tour in Europe.

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 about an American family coming apart at the seams? We ask the show's Oscar and Tony-winning writer, Diablo Cody. Also, we meet American playwright Will Arbery. His play Heroes of the Fourth Turning, lauded across the political spectrum, portrays conservative Catholics arguing about religion and politics in a Wyoming backyard — characters familiar to the playwright himself.

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 back into the spotlight. She's now artistic director of Adelaide's Restless Dance Theatre, which turns 30 this year. Also, award-winning playwright Kendall Feaver confronts sexual assault on campus in Wherever She Wanders at Griffin and we take a look at the curious history of pantomime with Virginia Gay, whose new play at Belvoir is called The Boomkak Panto.

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… Boom! Now Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) have brought it to the screen. Also, voice and text coach at the Sydney Theatre Company, Leith McPherson, shares more of her insights into the power of voice and Circa's visionary artistic director Yaron Lifschitz shares what's on his Top Shelf.

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 struggles of its composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and others celebrate how the unknown writer and director James Lapine steered Sondheim's work towards new vitality. James Lapine has now written a detailed and candid account of the show's fabled journey. It's called Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Made Sunday in the Park with George (Pan Macmillan).

A common thread runs through much of Australian theatre's boldest and most influential new work: director Paige Rattray. From humble beginnings in Tasmania, she now helps our most exciting new playwrights to realise their vision. Also, Stage Show regular Leith McPherson introduces her new role as Voice and Text Coach at the Sydney Theatre Company and dancer Raghav Handa and musician Maharshi Raval skirt the boundaries of Indian classical dance in Two at the OzAsia Festival.

Dr Lara Stevens' introduces us to Hartmut Veit, whose performances with coal in Victoria's Latrobe Valley spurred timely conversations with residents whose lives and livelihoods were intertwined with climate change.

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. So, what brought this powerful singer out of the office and into the spotlight? Also, playwright Michèle Saint-Yves reflects on her father's dementia and her own acquired brain injury in A Clock for No Time and choreographer Sue Healey compiles eight years of unique encounters with dance on film in On View: Panoramic Suite at Liveworks.

Tasmania's renowned contemporary dance company Tasdance is celebrating 40 years. The company's artistic director Adam Wheeler grew up in Launceston, but there was a time when he could not get off the island quick enough. So, what changed? Also, we visit the Queenstown shed hosting the new Tasdance work Collision at this year's The Unconformity and with the Melbourne Fringe Festival going digital for a second year, we meet some of the artists finding new ways to make work.

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 months — not counting all the screenplays he has written. Now at the age of 79, David Williamson has retired, and he looks back on his luminous career in a very candid memoir called Home Truths (HarperCollins), in which he throws open the doors to his writing room and takes us inside.

Van Badham is a courageous and funny Australian playwright who, since searching for the humanity of trolls in Banging Denmark at the Sydney Theatre Company, has now adapted George Orwell's Animal Farm for Black Swan in Perth. Also, historian Michelle Arrow introduces us to two other left-leaning Australian playwrights who raised the ire of the political establishment, Oriel Gray and Mona Brand, and we run through the big winners at this year's Tony Awards.

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-winning performance in Porgy and Bess, and Tony Sheldon, who was starring in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Also, we check in with the New York Times' chief theatre critic Jesse Green and preview next week's long-delayed Tony Awards, and we meet the man whose experiences informed Windmill Theatre Co's Amphibian, a play about a young Afghan's journey to Adelaide.

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 the show's underlying warning about climate change — but without the mask, Hanna might very well die. Also, we explore some of the unique considerations necessary to translate the work of Shakespeare into sign language and Sarah Houbolt outlines Arts Access Australia's vision for a National Access and Inclusion Code of Conduct.

What can a 60-year-old play about drunk and sometimes spiteful American academics tell us about culture and race relations in Australia? Margaret Harvey introduces her bold vision for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the State Theatre Company South Australia. Also, ABC Top 5 resident artist Rose Montgomery introduces us to the enduring, physical creative device that is still the stage designer's go-to tool for generating, developing and communicating ideas: the scale model.

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 Melbourne. Justin joins us at the keyboard to demonstrate how he updated some of the film's most iconic moments. Also, Trent Dalton's acclaimed novel Boy Swallows Universe comes to the Queensland Theatre stage and we check in on the challenges faced by and support on offer to artists and event organisers amid border closures, lockdowns and surging COVID-19 cases.

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. Juliet was performing in the play The Doctor, following its sell-out season at London's Almeida Theatre. Also, with much of the country back in lockdown, we turn to musical comedian Jude Perl to lift our spirits at the piano and we enjoy a masterclass with actor, director and acting coach Larry Moss, whose coaching has led actors to Academy Award-winning glory.

Incoming Melbourne Theatre Company artistic director Anne-Louise Sarks has a reputation for bringing the best out of people. She speaks about her process with her friend and collaborator, Zoë Coombs Marr — who delights in bringing Anne-Louise down a peg or two. Also, not content to highlight the work of just one Legend of Australian Theatre, Zoë attempts to double the series' output with a quickfire round and we hear a scene from Finegan Kruckemeyer's timely new play Hibernation at the State Theatre Company South Australia.

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 strong friendship around their insatiable curiosity and shared sense of fun. Also, Virginia Gay explains why her Cyrano at the Melbourne Theatre Company, based on the French classic, needed a happy ending, and Paula speaks with theatre-maker James Brennan about his work with people with lived experience of the criminal justice system.

Straight out of drama school, Paula Arundell became a mainstay for directors like John Bell, Jim Sharman and Benedict Andrews. Now she treads the boards as one of the most famous characters in literature: Hermione Granger in Harry Potter. She joins Kate Champion. Also, director Rachael Maza and the cast of Ilbijerri Theatre Company's production of Heart Is a Wasteland perform a song in the studio for us ahead of their national tour and we discover a new creative partner for choreographers: artificial intelligence.

The best theatre is always the result of a great collaboration and Neil Armfield found the ideal collaborator in Kate Champion — choreographer, director and founder of the dance theatre company Force Majeure. The pair's work includes Cloudstreet and The Ring Cycle. Also, we consider what complete silence might finally allow us to hear in Will O'Mahony's play Minneapolis and we question how far reinterpreting the classics can take us in Caesar at La Boite.

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 escape some challenges at home. He shares his story with Mark Howett as one of our Legends of Australian Theatre. Also, we visit a war-torn city and a family confronting the cost of survival in Samah Sabawi's play Them and we meet two comedians who have found the funny side of tragedy, bringing personal stories of grief and illness into their stand-up.

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 conversation between Australian stage icons, Kylie Bracknell sits down with designer and director Mark Howett. Also, as part of our High School Playlist series, we travel from London in 1959 to Alice Springs in 2039 and encounter a fish falling from the sky in Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling.

Taking on Macbeth is a mammoth task for any director but try translating and performing it entirely in Noongar. In our next conversation between legends of Australian theatre, Wesley Enoch meets Noongar actor, director and translator Kylie Bracknell (Kaarljilba Kaardn). Also, we hear a scene from the world premiere of York at Black Swan State Theatre Company and visit performer Paul Capsis and director Chris Drummond in rehearsal for Brink's music-rich adaptation of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

In the first of our conversations between legends of Australian theatre, the former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, steals the spotlight to interview his partner, Noonuccal Nuugi playwright and director Wesley Enoch. Also, David pays tribute to Australian ballet icon Lucette Aldous who recently died at the age of 82, and we travel to the tiny town of Gander in Canada to meet some of the real-life people whose generosity inspired the hit musical Come from Away.

Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare loom large in the canon of English drama. Two new books explore their lives, their work, their driving forces and their impact on theatre.

Composer and performer Eddie Perfect's Broadway adventures included some of the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Now with two Broadway credits and a Tony nomination on his CV, he's touring a new show of stories and songs: Introspective. Also, Robyn Nevin has been a leading talent in Australian theatre for decades, but her latest role may be one of her toughest yet — in A German Life, she becomes Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to the Nazi minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

American playwright Jen Silverman is a true believer in the power of theatre. She compares her first encounters with the theatre to walking into church. Her plays have enjoyed great success in Australia and now she has written her first novel, We Play Ourselves. Also, Opera Queensland are on the road and looking to make opera fans of country music lovers with their show Are You Lonesome Tonight and as Melbourne returns to lockdown, we revisit our story about dancers training in isolation during the pandemic.

Since his Tony Award-winning performance as The Emcee in the musical Cabaret, Scottish performer Alan Cumming has been increasingly enamoured of the form, opening his own cabaret bar in New York and now taking charge of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Also, we learn about the unifying power of roller derby in the play Ugly Virgins at the Blue Room Theatre in Perth and meet the gig economy workers involved in the new APHIDS theatre work about the hidden cost of convenience, Easy Riders.

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 Yorta composer and singer Deborah Cheetham and presented by Victorian Opera. Also, we visit a rehearsal of The Dispute, a work performed and co-created by children with experience of family separation, hear performance from the new Australian production of Chess and check in on London's West End theatres as they reopen their doors.

When dancer Amy Hollingsworth was just 18, she suffered a potentially career-ending injury. Yet, she didn't just recover — she flourished. She's now the artistic director of the Australasian Dance Collective, which is about to make its return to the stage. Also, we hear a scene from Andrea James and Catherine Ryan's Australian gothic play Dogged now at Sydney's Griffin Theatre and we consider the journey of social dance, particularly hip-hop, from the streets and clubs to the theatre with Erin Brannigan.

David Ireland writes very funny plays that often descend into bloody chaos and despair. Most, including his controversial play Ulster American, reflect the legacy of sectarian violence in his homeland of Northern Ireland and the fractured cultural politics of today. Also, with Opera Australia back on the road, we hear Natalie Aroyan perform an aria from Verdi's Ernani ahead of its Melbourne season, and we meet Roslyn Oades: an artist who uses interviews and other recordings to create unique works of documentary theatre.

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 into the historic art form. His Artifact Suite features in The Australian Ballet's Counterpointe, on now at the Sydney Opera House. Also, two actors bring a whole town to life in Emily Steel's complex and heartfelt ode to regional South Australia, Euphoria, and A Fight for Survival at the Yirramboi Festival revisits a community's efforts to save a largely Indigenous school in Melbourne from closure.

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 produced writers in the UK. His recent play The Cane is on now at Melbourne's Red Stitch. Also, what does it take for an Australian to make it on Broadway? We ask Carmel Dean, a composer and musical director who spent 20 years working on huge shows. And we pay tribute to the architect Viv Fraser, designer of some of Sydney's most iconic venues.

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 Honour at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre — a play that had its first reading with a cast that included Meryl Streep. Also, MasterChef meets The Hunger Games in the new Australian opera Chop Chef and we discuss the state of Australian playwriting with Currency Press founder Katharine Brisbane and the CEO of the newly formed Australian Plays Transform, Louise Gough.

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 bringing the classic variety television show Adelaide Tonight back to life on stage. Also, the Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore hit romantic comedy The Wedding Singer is now a stage musical and Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre have launched Because the Night — 'an immersive theatre adventure' — so, what does that mean?

Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss has been pushing the boundaries of stand-up since he was a teenager, raising topics like toxic relationships, sexual assault and the death of his sister on stage. But what toll did this material and relentless touring take on his mental health? Also, the flamboyant actor Coral Browne left Melbourne for London in the 1930s and became a huge star, later mentoring the likes of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Now, performer Amanda Muggleton and director Nadia Tass are telling her unbelievable story on stage.

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 she steps down as head of First Nations programming, how far have we travelled and what remains to be done? Also, with comedy festival season upon us, musical comedian Jude Perl lifts our spirits at the piano, and we look at the new Spanish and English audio play Romeo y Julieta and learn how Shakespeare's plays take on new layers of meaning in Latin America.

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 Australian and he's telling his story in a one-man show called Jali at Sydney's Griffin Theatre. Also, Australian composer Carmel Dean writes songs for history-makers in Well-Behaved Women, and playwright Anchuli Felicia King discusses how the Royal Shakespeare Company's digital productions are changing how we perceive theatrical space.

Hamilton is about to burst onto the Australian stage. We meet the musical's Tony Award-winning director Thomas Kail, whose friendship and collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda stretches back twenty years. Also, we meet the show's George Washington, Māori performer Matu Ngaropo, and find out what it means to play this complex historical figure, and we phone a stranger in A Thousand Ways — but what makes it theatre? We ask creators 600 Highwaymen.

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 of it lived in company with William Shakespeare. Also, Enlightenment by Joe Paradise Lui reimagines The Buddha and The Monkey King as two young women in contemporary Australia, and we reconnect two Harry Potter and the Cursed Child cast members a year after COVID-19 put the magic on hold.

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 paintbrush at the Archibalds and his recent turn as a voice actor, narrating The Boy from the Mish for Audible. Also, Opera Queensland present the Australian opera Lorelei, conceived and performed by Ali McGregor, and we learn about Sooraj Subramaniam's journey from Indian classical dance lessons at the age of six to a career as a globetrotting dancer.

For decades, Patricia Cornelius has been writing tough, passionate plays about people who are rarely seen or heard in Australian theatres. Through those years, she's often had director Susie Dee alongside her. Their new play is called Runt. Also, The Twins reunites comedian Greg Fleet and documentary maker Ian Darling more than 40 years after they starred in a school play together and Opera Australia's new production of Bluebeard's Castle by Béla Bartók confronts the work's uncomfortable themes.

Robyn Nevin has been a leading talent in Australian theatre for decades, but her latest role may be one of her toughest yet — in A German Life at the Adelaide Festival, she'll become Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to the Nazi minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Also, how Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first part of his Ring Cycle, changed the sound of opera forever and we discuss Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with creatives from Black Swan's new adaptation and two Year 12s studying the play.

Composer and performer Eddie Perfect's Broadway adventures included some of the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Now with two Broadway credits and a Tony nomination on his CV, he's touring a new show of stories and songs: Introspective. Also, we hear a scene from La Boite's Naked & Screaming by award-winner Mark Rogers, and America's most-produced living playwright, Lauren Gunderson, tackles the story of her own husband, virologist Nathan Wolfe, in The Catastrophist.

Following its acclaimed world premiere season, the Australian musical Fangirls returns. We learn how the show's writer, composer and original lead, Yve Blake, a theatre geek who can't play any instruments came to write one of the hottest musicals around. Also, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson shows us how to find the performer within when reading stories to children and Dr Erin Brannigan continues to share the joys of watching contemporary dance.

As Wesley Enoch wraps up his five years as artistic director of the Sydney Festival, he reflects on his decades-long commitment to Indigenous storytelling, the legacy of his directorship and what comes next. Also, we hear a performance from Black Brass at the Perth Festival, inspired by stories of resilience from Perth's African communities, and discuss the enduring popularity of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

Queensland Ballet artistic director Li Cunxin has continually shown his capacity for triumphing against the odds. He's drawn on that strength again to guide his company through the COVID-19 shutdown. Also, Tony Award-winning composer of Fun Home, Jeanine Tesori, joins us from her Manhattan living room to share her insights into creating great musical theatre.

Two of Australia's most celebrated actors, Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair join us in an extended version of our conversation from the Sydney Theatre Company, where the lights were back on and they were appearing together in Angus Cerini's new play, Wonnangatta.

We delve into two uniquely Western Australian First Nations productions at the 2020 Perth Festival: Jimmy Chi and Kuckles' Bran Nue Dae and Hecate, Yirra Yaakin's Noongar language adaptation of Macbeth.

Continuing our celebration of his 90th birthday, we delve into the later work of Stephen Sondheim — composer-lyricist of some of the most well-regarded and inventive musical theatre ever made.

To mark his 90th birthday, we delve into the work of Stephen Sondheim—composer-lyricist of some of the most well-regarded and inventive musical theatre ever made.

As we bring this devastating year to a close, we assess the damage the pandemic has inflicted on the performing arts, find silver linings and chart the road to recovery. With us to retrace some of 2020's key moments are performer Nadine Garner, leaders from Global Creatures, the Melbourne Theatre Company and Yirra Yaakin, and experts in arts accessibility and education.

When Pamela Rabe moved to Australia from Canada, she quickly became one of our most celebrated actors. The three-time Helpmann Award-winner will next year feature in The Last Season at Sydney Festival and The Cherry Orchard at Belvoir. Also, Sunshine Super Girl traces the triumphs — and trials — of Evonne Goolagong's rise to sports stardom and we meet a long-serving usher at Arts Centre Melbourne for whom the arts offered joy during difficult times.

In 1943, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! was groundbreaking, tackling heavy themes and integrating story, song and dance in a way that redefined musical theatre. Director Richard Carroll searches for new themes and ideas in this classic work at Black Swan. Also, ahead of this year's International Day of People with Disability, we touch base with members of Back to Back Theatre and premiere two new performances, and Opera Queensland artistic director Patrick Nolan shares the Best Advice he was ever given.

David McAllister's sheer determination as a dancer took him to the top of The Australian Ballet's roster and then the company's artistic directorship. Moving on after 20 years at the helm, he reflects on his life as a dancer and as a leader. Also, writer and performer Moira Finucane shares what's on her Top Shelf and historian of theatre architecture, Alistair Fair, explains how and why theatre design has changed so much in the last hundred years.

For 60 years, Nancye Hayes has been a mainstay of the Australian stage, starring in the Australian premieres of shows like Sweet Charity and Chicago and championing new work and young artists. She joins us to reflect on a life spent treading the boards. Also, we meet a group of Melbournians who spent their Friday nights in lockdown on Zoom delving into Greek tragedies. We log on with them and discover how these 2,000-year-old plays are strangely resonant with life in 2020.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers and creatives are finding mainstream audiences as never before. To mark NAIDOC Week, we revisit conversations with three prominent Indigenous artists: Rachael Maza, artistic director of Ilbijerri Theatre Company, and Stephen Page, artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, with his hugely talented son, Hunter Page-Lochard.

With all eyes on US politics, we visit one of their most enduring democratic institutions: New York's Public Theater. Besides developing hit shows like Hair, A Chorus Line and Hamilton, The Public makes work by, for and about the citizens of New York. Also, the operatic adaptation of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is revived by State Opera South Australia and we check in with two Victorian dance schools who have held on through the lockdown but fear that more challenges lie ahead.

Scottish playwright Kieran Hurley has built a career telling stories about himself and those around him, but his play Mouthpiece, now at Queensland Theatre, questions the ethics of putting these stories on stage and calling it 'art'. Also, we hear how a run-in with police inspired a new radio play featuring Osamah Sami and Rowan Freeman and Erin Brannigan guides us through more basics of dance literacy as we watch work by Ros Warby and Vicki Van Hout.

In the 1980s, Annette Shun Wah was at the cutting edge of Australian radio and television and was one of the first Asian Australians to host her own show. Now Annette is empowering a new generation of creative Australians. Also, Marta Dusseldorp and Ben Winspear launch their new company with a production of Angus Cerini's The Bleeding Tree in Hobart and we learn how to think like William Shakespeare.

Composer David Lang's operas take us to unexpected places — an opera that is too quiet to hear, an opera for 1000 singers and a rewrite of Beethoven's Fidelio. His opera Love Fail will have its Australian premiere online for the Yarra Valley Opera Festival. Also, how did a fake musical set in a supermarket become the most talked about show of 2020? When Daniel Mertzlufft posted a 40-second TikTok video of an act one finale to a non-existent musical, nothing had prepared him for what came next.

Two of Australia's most celebrated actors, Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair join us from the Sydney Theatre Company where the lights are back on and they're appearing together in the new play Wonnangatta. Also, Vidya Makan brings together 101 black, Indigenous and other artists of colour in her song I Need You to See Me and the axe begins falling on arts courses around the country in the wake of the pandemic.

Since launching to stardom with The Sapphires, Shari Sebbens has become a mainstay of the Australian stage and screen. Now making her directorial debut at Griffin, she has high hopes for what it might mean to other aspiring theatre-makers. Also, Opera Queensland bring us An Aria a Day and voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson helps us to channel our inner politician.

In court or in parliament, Malcolm Turnbull carried an air of showmanship. His memoir, A Bigger Picture, reveals that he actually comes from a long line of theatre people: a writer and performer mother, a vaudevillian grandfather and a Tony and Oscar-winning cousin. Also, we remember playwright and director Aidan Fennessy with his friend and collaborator Matt Cameron and find out how to write a showstopper with Mathew Frank, composer of a new musical adaptation of My Brilliant Career.

Youth arts organisations foster the talents of Australia's brightest performers and creatives, but how inclusive are they? Tariro Mavondo is a performer and poet who recently became co-artistic director of Western Edge Youth Arts with a bold vision for change. Also, Kate Hood shares the Best Advice she was ever given as an able-bodied actor and as a wheelchair user and Dr Erin Brannigan from UNSW guides us through some basics of how to watch and appreciate contemporary dance.

Sir Jonathan Bate has spent much of his life living with William Shakespeare — he's dedicated his career to better understanding the work of the Bard. Now the British academic is asking how Shakespeare's work might help us to save the planet. Also, we hear an extract from Elena Kats-Chernin's new work for Sydney Philharmonia Choirs' 100th birthday and find out how Brisbane-based company The Good Room craft crowdsourced submissions into complex and emotional theatre.

Van Badham is a courageous and funny Australian playwright who, since searching for the humanity of trolls in Banging Denmark at the Sydney Theatre Company, has now adapted George Orwell's Animal Farm for Black Swan in Perth. Also, we speak with Palawa writer Dylan Van Den Berg about the limitations — and surprising benefits — of developing his play Milk on Zoom with the Street Theatre in Canberra.

Ben Brantley, the New York Times' chief theatre critic since 1996, reflects on his lifelong love of theatre, Broadway's unprecedented shutdown, and the perception that a Times review can make or break a show. Also, cabaret icon Ali McGregor hosts an online variety show where you call the shots and we meet a woman intimately familiar with Belvoir St Theatre's history and design: her father drew the blueprints!

Thomas E.S. Kelly proves that you can be built like a rugby player and be a contemporary dancer. From a childhood committed to sport and dance, Kelly is emerging as one of our top dancers and choreographers. Also, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson on how to effectively use our voices within and beyond our COVID-19 bubbles, and we touch base with Carriageworks, Brisbane Festival and the Malthouse.

Belvoir Artistic Director Eamon Flack, who last year led the company to a staggering 13 Helpmann Awards, tells us about his journey to the helm of this beloved theatre company and how they have responded to the pandemic. Also, as the Darwin Festival forges ahead with a "homegrown" line-up, we visit the historic Brown's Mart Theatre with artistic director Sean Pardy as part of our Small Stages series.

We revisit some highlights from our time as theatregoers, including our encounter with the 'critic proof' Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn. Also, Anthony Warlow performs, Bangarra dancer Beau Dean Riley Smith shares his Top Shelf and we pay tribute to dance educator Athol Willoughby.

Shelley Lasica grew up in a home filled by modern dance, thanks to her pioneering mother Margaret. For thirty years Shelley has gone on to push the boundaries of what contemporary dance is and where it can be staged. Plus, the State Theatre Company of SA brings a new Decameron, written for the age of COVID-19. And could you be moved, amused, entranced by the performance of a robot actor?

Yaron Lifschitz turned an edgy punk circus in Brisbane into the hugely successful performing arts company Circa. He tells Michael how he went from studying history to directing precision acrobats. Plus, Mararo Wangai and Chris Isaacs turn life stories into moving monologues for Black Swan State Theatre Company and Julie Curtis talks about Russian theatre under Vladmir Putin.

What makes a leader, a super star? Director Saheem Ali has turned Shakespeare's Richard II, a tale of political intrigue and enmity, into a radio serial for our times; and nearing age 90, conductor Richard Bonynge reflects on the exquisite vocal style that made his wife Dame Joan Sutherland, La Stupenda, a legend. Plus, The Telephone: a bright dose of opera for a Zoom-weary audience.

Actor and singer Zahra Newman on performing a one-woman version of the claustrophobic Wake In Fright, and the hit musical The Book of Mormon. Also, musical theatre lovers celebrate Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, now on the small screen. And calming breathing techniques, for performance and life.

Does the diversification of mainstage theatre amplify or co-opt marginalised voices? Ilbijerri Theatre Company is one of Australia's only companies creatively controlled by Indigenous artists. We meet their artistic director, Rachael Maza. Also, we discuss August Wilson's famous The Ground on Which I Stand speech about the need to fund black arts organisations in America and visit the company that developed his first play: Penumbra Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The indefatigable Tim Minchin has achieved worldwide success as a comedian, composer, actor and writer, but twenty years ago he wanted to be known as a singer-songwriter. Also, Alan Cumming shares his Best Advice and we learn about the Alexander Technique — an approach to movement developed by a Tasmanian orator in the 1890s.

Australia's highly awarded soprano Emma Matthews shares stories from her life — from a childhood at sea, to achieving international renown, and teaching young singers to stay grounded while portraying characters who meet bitter ends. Also, in theatre-mad Estonia a young woman with no experience as a theatregoer is challenged to see every production in the country over a 12-month period.

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) has been confronting the racial tensions at the heart of America throughout his career. His new musical Soft Power tackles the country's waning influence in the Trump era. Also, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival offers a bite-sized home delivery, and voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson shares more of her insights into the power of voice.

Stephen Page, artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, and his talented son (and new dad), performer Hunter Page-Lochard join us for a candid conversation about passing a love of the arts down the generations. Also, Larissa Behrendt, Rhoda Roberts, Benjamin Law and Scott Rankin discuss moments reconciliation took centre stage, and we learn about the impact of Indigenous Australian plays in Japan.

Australian director Benedict Andrews' note-perfect production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams at the Young Vic in London, with Gillian Anderson as the tormented Blanche DuBois, is now streaming online. Also, we're joined by the cast of American Psycho: The Musical and retrace Francis Greenslade's unusual path to a career on the stage and screen.

She's written 25 plays, won three Helpmann awards and is now performing alongside Al Pacino, but writer and performer Kate Mulvany has never been afraid of her darker side. Also, we meet the cast of Inua Ellams' now streaming Barber Shop Chronicles and discuss the new phenomenon of staging theatre in our living rooms.

Queensland Ballet artistic director Li Cunxin has continually shown his capacity for triumphing against the odds. He's drawn on that strength again to guide his company through the COVID-19 shutdown. Also, we check in with performing arts companies around the country to gauge the mood, and speak with the Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher about the Government's response to a sector in crisis.

At 26, playwright Anchuli Felicia King has already seen her work performed on mainstages in London, Melbourne and Sydney, with US productions on the way. Also, Australian musical theatre performers unite for an online concert, and we take a closer look at the operas of the remarkably prolific Italian composer Rossini.

London's National Theatre, under the leadership of Rufus Norris, is striving for unprecedented diversity on stage and in the audience, and during the pandemic, we can now see their productions at home. Also, we visit some of Australia's top dancers training in isolation, and we continue our search for great theatre, opera, dance and comedy we can watch online.

Nadine Garner, one of Australia's best-known actors, confronts an arts sector in crisis. Also, we look at the revolutionary power of poetry slams with the authors of the book Slam Your Poetry.

The Tony Award-winning composer of Fun Home, Jeanine Tesori, joins us from her Manhattan living room to share her insights into creating great musical theatre. Also, Taiwan-based playwright and theatre director Stan Lai shares what's on his Top Shelf and Humphrey Bower reviews The Met Opera's recent crop of free streaming productions.

Comedian Zoë Coombs Marr says "being a man did wonders for her career," but she steps back into the spotlight as herself in Bossy Bottom, soon streaming online. Also, we pay tribute to American playwright Terrence McNally who recently died, and we look at the legacies of the plague and other diseases in the performing arts.

Continuing our celebration of his 90th birthday, we delve into the later work of Stephen Sondheim—composer-lyricist of some of the most well-regarded and inventive musical theatre ever made.

To mark his 90th birthday, we delve into the work of Stephen Sondheim—composer-lyricist of some of the most well-regarded and inventive musical theatre ever made.

Writer and comedian Ben Elton's career in the arts began in the turbulent 1980s and he has worn his passions and politics on his sleeve ever since. Also, we meet the choreographers behind the viral hit "art film" Black Swan from K-pop megastars BTS and discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the performing arts sector.

Missy Mazzoli says she composes opera to connect people in a profound way. She joins us ahead of the Australian premiere of her adaptation of Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves at the Adelaide Festival. Also, new cast members fly into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and we delve into William Shakespeare's Hamlet for our High School Playlist series with members of the current Bell Shakespeare production and students.

We're joined live on stage at the Adelaide Festival by the Olivier Award-winning English star of the stage and screen, Juliet Stevenson. Also, we tour Adelaide's Holden Street Theatres as part of our Small Stages series, and we talk 60 years of the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Fringe with Rob Brookman and Samela Harris.

The world's best-loved bearded diva and Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita Wurst joins us with our very own queen of cabaret, Trevor Ashley. Also, we pay tribute to Australian-born actor Zoe Caldwell, we visit international rising stars of dance Aakash Odedra and Hu Shenyuan in rehearsal for a new duet, and Peter FitzSimons on the craft of historical storytelling.

Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan achieved worldwide success with Fabulous Beast, but a yearning for his cultural roots led him to found a new company: Teac Damsa. Also, the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs recount a young man's life and horrific murder in Considering Matthew Shepard, and we discuss the resurgence of audio drama with America's most produced playwright Lauren Gunderson and Australian Lachlan Philpott.

On stage at the Perth Festival, we delve into two First Nations productions that are uniquely Western Australian: Jimmy Chi and Kuckles' Bran Nue Dae and Yirra Yaakin's Noongar language adaptation of Macbeth.

Samuel Beckett's friend and biographer James Knowlson shares the revelations found within the playwright's theatrical notebooks from when Beckett directed Waiting for Godot himself. Also, Elizabeth Chong takes us into the theatre of the kitchen, David Suchet shares his Best Advice and Anna Cordingley guides us through the principles of set and costume design.

Renowned theatre and opera director Phelim McDermott discusses his journey from Phillip Glass obsessive to collaborating with the man himself, voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson shares more insights into the power of voice, and following the fires in eastern Australia, we ask playwright Campion Decent about the power of verbatim theatre and the impact of his play Embers.

Treasured Australian playwright David Williamson reflects on fifty years in theatre ahead of the opening of his last ever plays, a transgender woman's journey is conveyed in song in As One, and ahead of Australia Day, we ask Wesley Enoch and Jane Harrison about their relationship with 26 January.

Tim Winton's Cloudstreet returns to the stage, we look back at when Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince staged some of the most inventive and challenging musical theatre Broadway had ever seen, we tour The Australian Ballet Centre's pointe shoe room and learn that it takes a firm hand to mould a soft shoe, and playwright Michelle Law drops by to share the Best Advice she ever got.

The writers of Who's Afraid of the Working Class? reunite for Anthem, choreographer Hofesh Shechter brings his Grand Finale back to Australia, we travel to the Komische Oper Berlin to find out how to make opera for everyone, and British comedian Sarah Millican takes control.

The Stage Show takes you to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival with a broadcast live on stage from The Famous Spiegeltent in Elder Park. Co-hosted by festival artistic director Julia Zemiro with special performances from The Swell Mob, Philip Quast, Fiona Choi, Steven Oliver and Hans.

John Tiffany and cast members discuss Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Marcia Hines and John Waters recall when Hair brought the promise of revolution to Australia, and we remember the defiance of those in drag at the Stonewall riots and meet three First Nations performers who continue to use drag as a tool for political expression.

We dive into Bizet's opera Carmen and the many ways the story continues to be told, we celebrate Uncle Jack Charles' Red Ochre Award win, and we meet the writers of Come from Away — a musical about the surprising impact of 9/11 on a remote Canadian town.

Black Cockatoo tells the story of Australia's first Indigenous sports star, cricketer Johnny Mullagh, we ask Australian creatives and performers to reflect on the last ten years of performing arts, Bernadette Robinson returns to Australia with Songs for Nobodies, and we share some seasonal cheer with Michael Cormick, Johanna Allen and the cast of Christmas Actually.

Romantic comedy Black Ties, directed by Rachael Maza and Tainui Tukiwaho, brings together Australia's Ilbijerri and New Zealand's Te Rēhia, our theatre critics highlight the best shows of the decade and their top picks for 2020, the Flying Fruit Fly Circus turns 40, we farewell British theatre director, actor and writer Jonathan Miller, and Kim Carpenter shares his Top Shelf.

We look at the origins of the Faustian bargain with Teddy Tahu Rhodes (Méphistophélès in the Opera Australia production of Gounod's Faust) and music scholar Peter Tregear, we search for the ghost of Federici, who died performing the Méphistophélès role in Melbourne in 1888, Maxine Doyle shares the Best Advice she was ever given, and we meet acclaimed director Damiano Michieletto ahead of his Royal Opera House production of Donizetti's Don Pasquale screening in Australian cinemas.

With the yuletide season drawing near, a live radio play version of the 1946 Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life will be staged in Perth, theatre producer and columnist Richard Jordan discusses the emerging transfer hubs for new theatre in New York and London, Fiona Blair reviews the Australian premiere of Oil by British playwright Ella Hickson, Leith McPherson leads us through some vocal warm-ups to get mouths moving and tongues twisting, and the Women's Circus stage their triennial large-scale production: The Drill.

Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical theatre star — and two-time Disney Princess — Lea Salonga brings her concert tour to Australia, Alana Valentine and Sandra France have written Flight Memory — a song cycle inspired by the Australian inventor of the black box premiering at The Street in Canberra, and Australian theatre-maker Roshelle Fong, having recently staged her show nomnomnom in China, explains what it's like to take a show on the road.

The work of playwright Louis Nowra has been on stages right across Australia and the world, but his latest drama — The Goodbye Party — is bound for your headphones, an almost 400-year-old copy of Shakespeare's First Folio of plays housed in an American public library is now believed to have belonged to the English poet John Milton, we encounter the famous life-size horse puppets backstage ahead of the return of War Horse to Australian stages in 2020,, and The Australian Musical by Peter Pinne and Peter Wyllie Johnston lovingly documents a century of Australian musical theatre.

The 1982 Australian musical film Starstruck has been developed into a new stage production that will premiere at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, at Adelaide's OzAsia Festival, we encounter two productions that use the culinary arts to help tell their stories — Kuro Tanino's The Dark Master and Abhishek Thapar's Surpassing the Beeline, Suzy Wrong reviews the Sydney Theatre Company and National Theatre of Parramatta co-production of White Pearl by Anchuli Felicia King, and writer and comedian Kathy Lette is taking her live stand-up show Girls' Night Out on the road.

Prolific American musical theatre composer Frank Wildhorn in conversation about his long career and the man who defined his Jekyll and Hyde: Anthony Warlow.

Circa continue their thrilling fusion of acrobatics with classical music and opera by teaming up with Opera Queensland for a new production of Orpheus and Eurydice, arts critic Tim Byrne reviews contemporary dance at this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival, Tony Award-winning director of Come from Away Christopher Ashley shares his Best Advice, we ask voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson whether we should affect accents on stage, and Open Homes, presented by La Boite, invites the public to step into a stranger's home and learn about their life.

As the OzAsia Festival kicks off in Adelaide, we meet the creators of a new work that interrogates the oft-overlooked Asian heritage of South Australia's first Surveyor-General William Light, the sweeping vineyards and pastures of the Yarra Valley in regional Victoria become the backdrop for the grand drama of opera at this year's Yarra Valley Opera Festival, and Natives Go Wild examines the darker side of the employment of First Peoples in circuses and sideshows at the turn of the last century.

The new Australian musical Fangirls challenges negative perceptions of female fandom and places their passion and power centre stage, Grey Rock at this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival tells the story of a Palestinian TV repairperson secretly building a rocket ship bound for the moon, and choreographers Sue Healey and Gideon Obarzanek discuss filming dance to capture and push the boundaries of an ephemeral art form.

92 years since its German premiere, Ernst Krenek's Weimar-era opera Jonny Strikes Up! will have its Australian premiere, State Opera South Australia's Lost Operas of Oz series continues with a new production of John Haddock and Michael Campbell's Madeline Lee, and voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson returns to The Stage Show to share more of her insights into the power of voice.

21 years after Who's Afraid of the Working Class?, Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela reunite for Anthem at the Melbourne Festival, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes by Back to Back Theatre shines a light on the shadows of prejudice, and we meet the team behind the most ambitious work at this year's Brisbane Festival: 59 Productions and Rambert's Invisible Cities, inspired by Italo Calvino's novel.

Acclaimed Israeli-born, UK-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter brings his Grand Finale to the Melbourne Festival, we travel to the Brisbane Festival to experience three Australian works that question the ways in which we connect: From Darkness, Bitch on Heat and Communal Table, award-winning English actor Maxine Peake shares the Best Advice she was ever given, and Chicago returns to the Australian stage, bringing glitz, glamour, guile and all that jazz.

We meet two groups of theatre makers taking their work beyond the proscenium at this year's Melbourne Fringe, Opera Australia utilise the industrial grandeur of its scenery workshop for Aribert Reimann's Ghost Sonata, acclaimed Australian soprano Helena Dix demonstrates how an opera singer's vocal decisions are key to their character portrayal ahead of her Melbourne Opera season of Bellini's Norma, and Temperance Hall artistic director and BalletLab founder Phillip Adams discusses his program of new dance works at this year's Melbourne Fringe.

The award-winning autobiographical musical Caroline, or Change by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) has its Australian premiere at the Hayes Theatre, director Adena Jacobs and performer Jane Montgomery Griffiths discuss tackling Shakespeare's grisly Titus Andronicus, the viability of digital publisher Australian Plays is under threat after losing Australia Council organisational funding, and MALAPROP Theatre from Ireland bring their hit comedy about human-robot relationships, LOVE+, to Australia.

In the next of our High School Playlist series, we put Arthur Miller's The Crucible on trial with Queensland Theatre artistic director Sam Strong and students from John Curtin College of the Arts, Cassie Tongue reviews the latest National Theatre production in cinemas: The Lehman Trilogy, we discuss director-choreographer Jerome Robbins' extraordinary career with Wendy Lesser, author of Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance (Yale University Press), and we visit Canberra's Street Theatre for Small Stages.

Bangarra Dance Theatre turn 30 this year and are marking the occasion with a triple bill called 30 Years of Sixty Five Thousand, Playwave aims to bring more young people into theatres by offering cheap tickets and special events for people under 20, contemporary circus company One Fell Swoop's new show Sensory Decadence indulges our senses, and audiences are invited to join the band in the ukulele musical Uked!

As the Darwin Festival kicks off, we find out about the unique opportunities — and challenges — that come with making art in the Northern Territory, we pay tribute to the late George Whaley, we speak with Omar Musa about his work Since Ali Died and its journey from poem to album to theatre, and Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece Sunday in the Park with George returns to the Australian stage.

We pay tribute to the legendary Broadway producer-director Hal Prince who has died at the age of 91 after a long career that broke records and rules. His Broadway directing credits include Cabaret, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera and six productions with Stephen Sondheim. We talk about Hal Prince's extraordinary impact on Broadway with arts administrator and writer Howard Sherman and Sonya Suares, artistic director of theatre company Watch This.

How can performers maintain a healthy mind and body? Choreographer Gideon Obarzanek, The Australian Ballet's Sue Mayes and dance scientist Peta Blevins discuss how dancers can find their balance. Arts Centre Melbourne CEO Claire Spencer and soprano Greta Bradman join us to talk about The Arts Wellbeing Collective and their Support Act Wellbeing Helpline. We learn about Barking Gecko Theatre's program for young people, which has demonstrated mental health benefits. And ABC Classic's Mairi Nicolson joins us to share some of her favourite moments in opera and musical theatre when a character's health becomes the story.

We hear music from The Ghetto Cabaret which follows a group of Jewish performers living in horrific conditions in the ghettos of WWII, Marcia Hines and John Waters recall when Hair, the "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical", brought controversy, excitement and the promise of revolution to Australia, and British playwright Alistair McDowall shares the works that have most inspired his journey as an artist in Top Shelf.

Elena Kats-Chernin and Justin Fleming have written a new work for Opera Australia about the life of the brilliant, troubled Australian artist Brett Whiteley, in the second instalment of The Cost of Art, Hannah Reich speaks to theatre-maker Declan Greene, dancer and choreographer Anna Seymour and Urban Theatre Projects' Jessica Olivieri, theatre critic Tim Byrne reviews Bell Shakespeare's new production of Much Ado About Nothing, and an Australian production of Bring It On: The Musical with music and lyrics co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda is now on tour.

Productions from Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre have dominated this year's Helpmann Awards with big wins for Counting and Cracking and Barbara and the Camp Dogs, Peter Carey's Booker Prize and Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Oscar and Lucinda comes alive in a new opera, Playwriting Australia board member Andrew Bovell explains the organisation's decision to suspend operations and undertake an independent review, and skateboarding and theatre collide in Big hART initiative SKATE — a big show with even bigger ambitions.

In this Helpmann Awards special, we revisit some of our favourite moments with this year's crop of nominees. S. Shakthidharan's massive play Counting and Cracking presents a Sri Lankan family's experiences in Australia and during the civil war, Ursula Yovich's Barbara and the Camp Dogs takes us on a wild musical road trip from Sydney to Katherine, Australian Dance Theatre's Beginning of Nature moves to the rhythm of Kaurna, and Willy Wonka throws open the doors to his chocolate factory in a new stage musical.

On stage at NIDA's Playhouse, we bring together a panel of teachers, alumni and students to reflect on 60 years of professional theatre training in Australia. We're joined by John Bashford, director of NIDA's Centre for Acting, Ben Schostakowski, leader of the Master of Fine Arts course in directing, alumni Lee Lewis, the artistic director of Griffin Theatre Company, and actor Dalara Williams (Blackie Blackie Brown, Winyanboga Yurringa, Top End Wedding), as well as current acting students Mabel Li and Bronte Thomson-Sparrow and recent directing graduate Tait de Lorenzo.

When police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City on the evening of 27 June, 1969, drag queens were targeted for arrest. The defiance of those in drag and other LGBT people that night sparked days of riots that are remembered today as a turning point for queer liberation. On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, we meet three First Nations drag performers who continue to use drag as a tool for political expression.

Come from Away is a new musical that takes audiences to the remote Canadian town of Gander on 11 September, 2001 when the town's population almost doubled, Yamatji and Wongi actor Meyne Wyatt makes his debut as a playwright in City of Gold, a co-production from Queensland Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company, and we visit the Old Fitz Theatre and its resident theatre company Red Line Productions which has a reputation for producing shows that transfer to bigger stages around Australia.

Hayes Theatre Co presents Razorhurst — a new musical based on the true story of Darlinghurst gang leaders Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, we investigate a Murder on the Wireless at the Ensemble Theatre which brings classic radio drama to the stage, and we talk about Yank! A WWII Love Story that follows two gay servicemen in the US Army as they navigate queer love in the face of discrimination.

In this bonus podcast episode of The Stage Show, we take you to Broadway's big night: the 73rd Tony Awards. We discuss the big winners Hadestown and The Ferryman, actor Ali Stroker's history-making award for Oklahoma!, Eddie Perfect's mixed fortunes this season and we speak to our very own Australian Tony winner Sonny Tilders.

The Stage Show takes you to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival with a broadcast live on stage from The Famous Spiegeltent in Elder Park. Co-hosted by festival artistic director Julia Zemiro, the program includes special performances from The Swell Mob, star of the stage and screen Philip Quast, Fiona Choi channels the legendary Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong, Black Comedy favourite Steven Oliver shows off his cabaret chops and Hans and his accordion bring the house down.

In the 1970s, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director-producer Harold Prince made some of the most inventive and challenging musical theatre that Broadway had ever seen. Two of those shows — A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street — return to Australian stages this month. Also on the program, we're joined by New York Times theatre reporter Michael Paulson for all the latest news ahead of the 73rd Tony Awards, and MTC are touring a production of Finegan Kruckemeyer's The Violent Outburst That Drew Me to You for young people in regional Victoria and Tasmania — so what is the impact of seeing professional theatre for the first time?

We meet legendary performer Uncle Jack Charles who has been awarded this year's Red Ochre Award, Cassie Tongue reviews Suzie Miller's Prima Facie at Griffin Theatre Company, Vietnamese circus company Nouveau Cirque du Vietnam bring their show À Ố Làng Phố to the Sydney Opera House, a listener shares memories of Germaine Greer teaching Shakespeare at Marrickville Girls Junior High, and we go behind the scenes with stage manager Khym Scott.

One of David Bowie's last major projects before his death was the musical Lazarus — it's now come to Australia, for the next in our High School Playlist series we lay our scene in fair Verona and meet the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, and to mark one year since the fire that destroyed Melbourne's iconic La Mama Theatre, we visit the site with artistic director Liz Jones and company manager Caitlin Dullard.

Operagoers in Australia tend towards a narrow and privileged demographic, so how might we see greater diversity? We find an answer in Berlin. Also on the program, we say farewell to Doris Day, historical boundaries for Aboriginal people are revisited and tested in Co3's new dance work THE LINE, and NORPA take over the historic Bangalow A&I Hall with their show Dreamland.

20 years since it last appeared on their stage, Tim Winton's Cloudstreet returns to the Malthouse Theatre under the direction of Matthew Lutton, theatre critic Tim Byrne reviews Sydney Theatre Company's new production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Aboriginal Australian performers Vicki Van Hout and Joel Bray use humour (and powdered sugar) to wrestle with their Indigenous heritage at Yirramboi, and playwright Patricia Cornelius shares her Best Advice.

UK writer and director Javaad Alipoor's The Believers Are But Brothers unpacks extremism in the age of the internet, we pay tribute to Australian poet Les Murray, lighting designer Richard Vabre takes us behind the scenes to explain his craft, Fleur Kilpatrick and David Finnigan discuss the spectre of climate change on stage, and Tanja Beer explains her philosophy of sustainable theatre making and 'ecoscenography'.

In her cabaret show Rendezvous with Marlene, Ute Lemper shares the story of a long phone exchange with an ailing Marlene Dietrich in 1988, The Ripples Before the New Wave documents the lasting impact of the University of Sydney’s flourishing drama scene in the late 1950s and early 60s, if the idea of "audience participation" makes many queasy, what drives some theatre makers to invite audiences onto the stage and into the story? And acclaimed Taiwanese playwright and director Stan Lai shares the poem, song, play and film that have inspired his journey as an artist.

In My Urrwai, Ghenoa Gela reflects on life as 'Torres Strait mainlander', Fiona Blair reviews the radically stripped-back NT Live production of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, ahead of World Circus Day we ask: is circus still transgressive? And we find out about the new production of Muriel's Wedding: The Musical playing some of our biggest theatres this year.

We meet Joey McKneely, director of the touring production of West Side Story and are treated to a live performance from the cast, we start our series on plays being studied in Australian schools with Louis Nowra's Così which will this year be revived at the MTC and STC, we hear all the news from the 2019 Olivier Awards, Single Asian Female playwright Michelle Law shares the Best Advice she ever got, and we learn about Mimma: an ambitious new Australian musical about to open in Perth.

Cuban dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta's production of Don Quixote for The Royal Ballet will soon screen in Australian cinemas as part of The Royal Opera House Live Cinema Season, we meet members of the first cohort of Intersect, a peer mentorship and knowledge exchange program for creatives in the UK and Australia from culturally diverse backgrounds, and we look at two vastly different approaches to presenting the work of William Shakespeare at this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

We meet three young up-and-coming comedians in this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Larry Dean, Sarah Keyworth and Catherine Bohart, Sydney Dance Company turns 50 — we discuss their history and their 2019 season with artistic director Rafael Bonachela and former dancers Shane Carroll and Sheree Zellner (da Costa), we review the Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour's production of West Side Story, and we find out about Kate Mulvaney's new play The Mares — its world premiere is at the Tasmanian Theatre Company as part of Ten Days on the Island.

Acclaimed Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius has been awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for drama, US playwright Clare Barron's Dance Nation follows a group of teens in the throes of adolescence finding their place in a hyper-sexualised and competitive world of dance, and we speak with playwright and performer Nakkiah Lui about her new satirical play at the Sydney Theatre Company — How to Rule the World.

Gideon Obarzanek guides us through the programs of Melbourne's biennial dance celebration Dance Massive and the new Sydney dance festival March Dance, and with three Carmen-inspired productions on Australian stages, we take a deep dive into Bizet's opera and the many ways the story continues to be told.

From the heart of the Adelaide Festival — The Palais on the riverbank at Elder Park — we're joined live on stage by artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield to meet some of the tremendous local and international talent in this year's program. Guests include choreographer Meryl Tankard, artistic director of Windmill Theatre Co. Rosemary Myers, Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti from Dutch production Blaas, and Alfonso Barón, Luciano Rosso and Hermes Gaido — the team behind the Argentinian contemporary dance work Un Poyo Rojo.

As a bonus for podcast listeners, we speak with playwright and performer Nakkiah Lui about her new satirical play at the Sydney Theatre Company: How to Rule the World. The play is about three Australian political aspirants — an Aboriginal (Lui), an Asian (Michelle Lim Davidson) and an Islander (Anthony Taufa) — who realise they need a white political puppet to change the system from within. Nakkiah, Michelle and Anthony join us.

Director John Tiffany and cast members talk Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — the theatrical phenomenon that has just opened in Melbourne's Princess Theatre, Lano and Woodley's Fly is their first show as a duo in 12 years, and as the Perth Festival enters its final week, Humphrey Bower breaks down the hits and misses of this year's program — Wendy Martin's last at the helm.

Eddie Izzard on workshopping his new show Wunderbar in French and German, we tour The Australian Ballet Centre's pointe shoe room with dancer Jade Wood and artistic coordinator Robyn Begg, we follow a post-apocalyptic theatre troupe who perform their hazy memories of The Simpsons in Mr Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and Bangarra dancer Beau Dean Riley Smith tells us what's on his Top Shelf.

Live on stage from the foyer of the Heath Ledger Theatre, Michael Cathcart introduces you to some of the biggest local and international artists at this year's Perth Festival. We hear all about Lost and Found Opera's Ned Kelly, meet Greek director and choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou (The Great Tamer), discuss how much can change in 20 years with Perth Festival artist-in-residence Ursula Martinez (A Family Outing — 20 Years On, Free Admission), and learn about Black Swan's production of Our Town, which features non-professional actors from the local community in the cast.

Theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky talks us through his brilliantly outlandish reimagining of Mozart's The Magic Flute, we learn about the integral, but sometimes unnoticed, work of sound designers with J. David Franzke, and Ursula Yovich's Barbara and the Camp Dogs takes us on a wildly funny and unflinchingly honest musical road trip from Sydney to Katherine.

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story tells the true story of two Jewish people seeking refuge in Canada in 1908, British comedian Sarah Millican talks about the everyday intimate stuff that many of us avoid with disarming candour, theatre critic Cassie Tongue reviews the epic new Australian play Counting and Cracking, and we hear about the centrepiece of the Midsumma Festival's performing arts program this year — a series of events performed under the banner: BODY.

One Infinity, featuring a live score by Genevieve Lacey and the Jun Tian Fang Music Ensemble, brings together dancers from Dancenorth and the Beijing Dance Theatre, author Stuart Kells outlines the hunt for the Bard of Avon's personal collection and why it matters in Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature, and a vocal impressionist, a surrealist drag artist and a lonely soul singer welcome us to Fringe World 2019.