We hear about STC's The Hanging, a play about three young women vanish from their private school; djinns and pichal pairees take to the streets of Karachi in Sami Shah's Fire Boy; ww ponder why academic language is still so complex; and George Williams reviews Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Two Jews walk into a theatre. It sounds like a joke, but it's a new theatre production from Gideon Obarzanek and Brian Lipson. We meet artists Lucas Ihlein and Trevor Yeung who are bringing the Chinese city of Guangzhou to Sydney, and chat with debut Australian novelist Zoe Morrison.

The distributors of VAULT, a contemporary art magazine published in Melbourne, have been forced to cover up the painting of a nude woman on the cover of their latest issue; RN's Claire Nichols take us to Edinburgh Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world; Melbourne Opera's Tannhäuser and Philippa Gregory's new novel, Three Sisters, Three Queens.

Victoria Opera and Circus Oz have joined forces to create a new work that fuses Italian music with high-octane physical theatre, Libyan writer Hisham Matar's new book The Return, is a powerful account of his search for his 'disappeared' father; The Painted Bach is a performance work which brings live music and live painting on stage together.

Andrea James' new play Winyanboga Yurringa picks up from the groundbreaking 1980s television series Women of the Sun, American poet and activist Mahogany Browne talks about writing, race, identity and voice, Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia makes buildings that resemble lush green forests, and writer Marina Lewycka talks about her latest novel The Lubetkin Legacy.

A Love Affair with Shakespeare.

A Nest of Skunks, a new Australian play about a family of asylum seekers sheltering in a house that proves to be anything but safe, The Casula Powerhouse Art Centre in western Sydney is presenting a landmark exhibition made by artists from around the world with a refugee background; and novelist Sarah Perry on her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, about a small English town at the end of the 19th Century which is terrorised by a deadly serpent.

Verity Laughton's new play explores the Australian experience of World War One through the letters and documents in the Red Cross archive, writer Monica Lewycka speaks about her latest comic novel The Lubetkin Legacy, The Wider Earth brings actors and puppets together in a stage play about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's current series of concerts celebrate both popular and little known baroque musical works.

We discover Mary Anne Butler's play Broken, the first play to win the Victorian Prize for Literature; Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia on seeking inspiration and materials from the natural world; Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher on their Masterpiece, Patti Smith's 1975 debut album Horses; and David Crystal, a leading historian of the English language, on the history of punctuation.

Journalist Ben Eltham's Currency House Platform Paper examines the past four years of cultural policies, across various federal governments in Australia, Andrea James' new play Winyanboga Yurringa explores the contemporary lives of a group of Koori women, American writer Jami Attenberg describes her masterpiece, and Belgian writer Stefan Hertmans' novel is a very personal perspective on World War One.