Monkey Baa Theatre Company is touring a new 50-minute musical based on Jackie French and Bruce Whatley’s quintessentially Australian picture book to 54 venues this year.
It’s about Shaun, the sheep shearer, and Pete, a sheep, who set up their own shearing salon and are inundated with woolly clients. The composer/lyricist is Phil Scott, best known as pianist / performer in The Wharf Review. Neil Litchfield asked him about the challenge of writing songs for children.
Two seriously comic new plays feature characters on the move — by presidential jet plane or by cruise ship. FRANK HATHERLEY talks to their very grounded directors. In Melbourne, the director is working with three first-time playwrights. In Sydney, the director is working with Australia’s most successful playwright: himself.
Sam Strong, at 37, has directed very many new Australian plays. “I grew up theatrically”, he says, “directing new work at all the usual Melbourne independent venues.”
Johanna Allen Pays Deserved Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
Music history is full of famous songwriters but there was something about Harold Arlen’s work, together with the legendary artists who sang them, that drove vocal powerhouse and Adelaide Cabaret Festival regular, Johanna Allen, to create The Songs That Got Away: The Music of Harold Arlen, a show she proudly brings to Adelaide for this year’s festival.
Much has been written, said and performed over many decades about the life and music of Edith Piaf, but Adelaide audiences will have a chance to decide for themselves who the legendary singer really was when Exposing Edith plays the 2014 Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival in June, before the show heads overseas later this year.
Unique dance company Pilobolus has perfected the art of creative shadow storytelling. On the eve of their Australian tour with the acclaimed Shadowland, two of the company’s directors took time to answer questions from Coral Drouyn.
Few of us didn’t, at some time in our childhood, make shadow images on a bed sheet with the aid of a torch for our friends’ amusement. It’s a far cry from the hi-tech and sophisticated art of Pilobolus, about to tour nationally with their amazing shadow piece Shadowland.
Catherine Alcorn, who stars in Go Your Own Way: The Story of Christine McVie at Glen Street Theatre from May 27 to June 1, speaks to Neil Litchfield about the inspiration for the show.
On the eve of Fleetwood Mac’s long-awaited comeback tour, Christine McVie decided she would not give in to the pleas for her to rejoin the band. Instead, she tweeted “Sorry folks. No tour.”
Organisers from The ANZ Trustees Foundation: Rob Guest Endowment have today (May 22, 2014) announced two new awards for 2014 bringing the prize pool to in excess of $45,000 and called for competition entries.
Celebrating over ten years of touring worldwide, Celtic Legends will be touring capital cities and regionally throughout Australia from October – November 2014.
Celtic Legends delivers 100% live traditional Irish dance, music and song.
Born in the wild and beautiful hills of Connemara in Ireland back in 2002, Celtic Legends recreates the art form in its own way by stripping it down to the bare essentials, presenting a traditional dance show which has a more vital feel.
Vitalstatistix hosts National artist/performer hothouse. Lesley Reed reports.
Vitalstatistix’s Adhocracy program started out as a one day workshop in 2010 and in less than four years has grown into a national interdisciplinary development platform for performers and artists. It has supported thirty five projects and involved one hundred and fifty artists over its short life.
At its Annual General Meeting today (May 19, 2014), Sydney Theatre Company (STC) announced an operating profit of $431,000 for 2013, on a turnover of $35M.
Releasing the Company’s Annual Report, Chairman David Gonski said: “The 2013 program, the last by Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett as STC’s Co-Artistic Directors, proved to be enormously successful in both artistic and commercial terms, attracting rave reviews and extraordinary attendances across the year.”
