The first recorded performance of the theatre company that Shakespeare co-founded was at a playhouse south of the Thames, but was lost to historians for centuries. Now we know where it lies.
Peter Cummins as Monk O’Neill in the 1972 Australian Performing Group production of A Stretch of the Imagination.
Photographer unknown.
David Williamson and Jack Hibberd tower over Australian drama. Williamson’s The Department and Hibberd’s A Stretch of the Imagination both showcase the strange yet compelling detachment of these playwrights’ visions.
Andile Gumbi beats down his opponent Given Mkhize in the King Kong musical.
John Hogg
Drags kings have recently been declining in popularity, partly due to the evolving debate around gender and identity. But now a new and more inclusive drag culture is taking the stage.
La Mama’s value lies in the hard-to-measure connections between collaborators in theatre.
La Mama
This year Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre celebrates its 50th year of operation. In an interview for the company’s 20th anniversary, the founding director Betty Burstall said: The basic thing is the money…
Discontinuities, a triple bill staged at La Mama in 2002.
La Mama
From Cate Blanchett to David Williamson, some of Australia’s most well known theatre artists have performed at La Mama, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
The Rover begins with 17th-century playwright Aphra Behn inviting those who don’t like the idea of a female writer to fuck off, setting the tone for a hilarious and utterly relevant romp through Naples.
Nearly three-quarters of Australians go to live art events, such as Dark Mofo in Hobart.
Stefan Karpiniec/Flickr
New survey from the Australia Council shows pretty much all Australians engage with the arts, and 8-in-10 do so online. However more people are ambivalent about public arts funding, and more people think the arts are too expensive.
Cameron Goodall in The Sound of Falling Stars at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Damian Bennett
The Sound of Falling stars brings 31 male singers who died young, including Sid Vicious, Jim Morrison and Jeff Buckley, back to life, and forces us to question our role in their fates.
Elizabeth Esguerra, Belinda McClory and Ming Zhu Hii in Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at Melbourne’s Malthouse.
Pia Johnson
‘Well behaved women seldom make history,’ wrote historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Revolt. She said. Revolt again. at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre takes the idea to its apocalyptic extremes.
As thrilling as they are for audiences, Australia’s musical theatre scene is dominated by productions honed on the West End and Broadway.
PAUL MILLER
Musical theatre nominees at the 2017 Helpmann Awards are dominated by overseas productions. Our own productions need way more support to compete on the world stage.
Ben Hall and Tim Draxl in Only Heaven Knows
Robert Catto
Queer life thrived in 1940s Sydney despite policing and prohibition, as a new production of the musical Only Heaven Knows demonstrates. But it was not to last.
Sol Feldman in The Book of Exodus at Theatre Works.
PiaJohnson