The first show of April is an opportunity to meet another new member of the Theatre Network Australia team – Christy Flaws who is Programme Producer for Circus and Physical Theatre Strategy…  and of course she’ll be introducing the TNA Member of the Month, artist, change maker and cross cultural consultant Aseel Tayah…

 

Then we do some rapid-fire introductions to a handful of shows at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival…  Melissa McGlensey from The Briefing, Dylan Cole from Case Numbers and Otto Rot from Otto and Astrid’s Joint Solo Project…

 

And it’s not part of the Comedy Festival but it is a bit comedy but it’s also a bit drama, which makes Pear Shaped a dramedy and we’ll be catching up with its writer/director Miranda Middleton…

 

And then we’ll wrap up the show with a visit to the City Gallery at Melbourne Town Hall to meet Sean Lynch, the curator of Desire Lines, a very eclectic exhibition of objects from the archives…

 

They’re all on this weekt’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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It's Darwin week on Behind the Scenes which means a chat with Sophia Hall at Brown’s Mart who’ll be introducing us to textile and installation arts Aly De Groot to talk about her work with comedy clown Anna Thomson in the rapid fire Performance Experiments programme.

 

And while we’re talking about textiles, let’s find out about Pliable Planes, an exhibition of experimental textiles at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. We’ll meet Co-Curator Catherine Woolley.

 

Meanwhile, at Arts House in North Melbourne, we’ll catch the end of the Frame Festival and find out what’s coming up when we catch up with Co-Artistic Directors, Emily Sexton & Nithya Nagarajan.

 

And finally, the air will be vibrating out at Monash Performing Arts Centres with the first performance in Vibrating Air, a chamber music series that kicks off with our guest clarinettist Magdalenna Krstevska.

 

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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The Melbourne International Comedy Festival may not be officially underway just yet, but in our continued effort to get ahead of the curve we’re catching up with two Comedy Festival favourites tonight…

 

First up, it’s Simon Palomares who’s been around the comedy traps both locally and internationally since the festival first began, so before we find out about his latest show, let’s go back to the beginning, almost forty years ago, and a little show called Wogs Out of Work…

 

Was Tania Lacy really known as the ‘enfant terrible’ of 80s Australian Television? If that’s true, then how is it that everything is now coming up roses? We’ll find out when we meet Tania and join some of the dots between her days choreographing for Kylie and hosting The Factory to this, her latest offering for the Comedy Festival…

 

And finally, it might be comic, but it not in the Comedy Festival. Opera Director Constantine Costi and Victorian Opera have given a contemporary spin to Dimitri Shostakovich’s mid twentieth century opera, Moscow Cheryomushki transplanting the tale of the Russian housing shortage of the fifties to the inner north of Melbourne…

 

It’s all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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If you know anything about Garrison Keillor’s old time radio show A Prairie Home Companion, then you might have some idea of what to expect from Bring it Home, the interactive and participatory concert celebrating the diversity of older people. And if you don’t know what this all means, then Creative Producer Karen Davitt is here to set you straight.

 

Then, it’s time for the Darebin FUSE Festival again and we’ll catch up with two events from its extensive programme. The Molly Hadfield Social Justice Oration has been presented for more than a decade and we’ll find out who Molly Hadfield was and what to expect from this year’s line up when we meet Senior Producer Lauren Mullings before meeting the first ever Teen Orator, Zuva Goverwa.

 

Meanwhile at the Northern Community Church in Preston, you can get up close and personal with a whole bunch of Thingamabobs – surprising machines and quirky contraptions each of which has a story to tell…  and to tell us about it is the creator of Thingamabobs, Jens Altheimer.

 

And finally, FUSE isn’t the only festival looming on the calendar. Pretty soon it’ll be time for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, so we’re getting in early with a visit from one of our favourites. The Tuck Shop Ladies – Sam Lohs and Rosie Burgess who are here to talk about In Real Life, their new show at The Butterfly Club…

 

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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How did it get to be March. Next thing you know, the leaves will be falling from the trees. But before they do, it’s time to catch up with Josh Lowe from Theatre Network Australia and find out Us and All of This, a performance for Frame that he’s working on with the TNA member of the Month Liesel Zink.

 

Then we meet Joanna Robertson who’s the driving force behind the Hand in Hand – Kidogo Irish Aboriginal Festival in Fremantle, WA.

 

Back in Melbourne, we meet Paul Grabowsky wearing one of his many hats – this one is Executive Director of Monash Performing Arts Centres where artists Franck Vigroux and Antoine Schmitt are about the present Cascades, an audio visual experience based on the idea of waterfalls.

 

And then, of course, it’s about time we did some Screens & Streams with Marc Gracie. This time we’re looking at some of the front runners for this year’s Oscars.

 

It’s all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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We’re off to the NT for the first time this year where we’ll catch up with our Darwin correspondent, Brown’s Mart CEO Sophia Hall for all the latest on the local arts scene before Sophia introduces us to Tahlia Biggs who’s about to take to the stage in a production of Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman’s classic play The 7 Stages of Grieving.

 

Back in Melbourne we’re gearing up for the biggest and newest dance happening of the year. Frame is a new festival of dance, so where better to find out about it than at DanceHouse where we meet the festival’s Co-Director Josh Wright.

 

And finally, Matrescence is a word that describes the physical, emotional, hormonal and social transition a woman experiences as she becomes a mother. It’s also the title of indie folk singer-songwriter Claire Tonti’s first album who gives us some reflections on her own matrescence.

 

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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Jonathan Craig is a writer, policy advisor, audio producer and accessibility consultant. From 2018 to 2021 he was Editor of the quarterly magazine from Blind Citizens Australia, where he was credited with transforming the publication. He has also been a member of the Program Advisory Committee for Emerging Writers Festival, and has been a consultant on several Arts House projects, including co-devising The Warehouse Residency program for Deaf and Disabled artists. A lifelong science fiction fan, he’s interested in exploring the consequences of post-humanism and the future of disability. 

Here he speaks to Vision Australia Radio presenter Chris Thompson (Behind the Scenes) and the discussion includes a preview of the upcoming FRAME: A biennial of dance - a month of dynamic dance; Arts House will present a suite of dance offerings that will confront, evoke and uplift.

Learn more about FRAME via the following link:https://www.artshouse.com.au/frame-a-biennial-of-dance/ 

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It's a big welcome back to our Perth correspondent, Helen Simondson to start us off this week…   it’s Perth Festival time so, after a bit of an overview from Helen, she’ll introduce us to her guest Artistic Director of the Perth Festival, Iain Grandage.

 

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, it’s time for the Women in Film Festival and who better to tell us about it than the festival’s Director, Sian Mitchell.

 

Jonathan Craig is a writer, policy advisor, audio producer and accessibility consultant who recently joined the North Melbourne Arts House Access Advisory Group. We’ll meet Jonathan and discover that, unsurprisingly, one of his passions is audio description for the performing arts.

 

And finally, even though it’s technically our Western Australia week, we’re making a quick stop in Adelaide for the Adelaide Fringe where Tim Ferguson is not only Disability Ambassador for the Garden of Unearthly Delights, but is performing there in the third of his trilogy on disability; Disability Rules!

 

They’re all on this week’s edition of Behind the Scenes with Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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This week we spend almost the whole show in St Kilda, starting off with the return of the St Kilda Festival and we’ll meet Festival Lead, Sullivan Patten top find out about this year’s focus on First Peoples First programme…

 

Staying in St Kilda, we’ll drop in on Theatre Works to catch up with Executive Director and Creative Producer Dianne Toulson who’ll tell us about their huge programme and why they opened a second venue during a pandemic…

 

Down the hill from Theatre Works at Linden New Art, we’ll meet the new Director Vincent Alessi and take a look at the annual Postcard Show…

 

Then, it’s enough of St Kilda, so we’re off to Bendigo to meet Keva Lloyd who in addition to being a member of the Victoria Welsh Choir, is also looking for your help in writing a history of amateur theatre in Bendigo…

 

They’re all on tonight’s edition of Behind the Scenes with me Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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Well, the year is never properly started until we meet our first Theatre Network Australia Member of the Month but before we do, let’s meet one of the newest members of the TNA Team, Charice Rust who’ll introduce us to February’s Member of the Month  Jascha Boyce, co-founder, producer, acrobat and performer with Gravity and other Myths…

 

After that we’re off to LaMama for another Midsumma Festival show – Kovid Kat Kabarett Goes Spiral – and we’ll meet creator Ella Filar and performers Maureen Hartley and Chris Molyneaux…

 

Meanwhile, it looks like Finucane and Smith have taken over the Chinese Museum in Melbourne with their production House of the Heart…  we welcome Moira Finucane back to the show along with Lois Olney, Dave Johnson, Paul Cordeiro, Zitao Deng, Kate Foster and Xiao Xiao…

 

And finally, Daytime Music Theatre is returning to Bunjil Place in Narre Warren and the first performer in this year’s programme will be Tom Burlinson…  so that would seem like a good reason to get him on the phone…

 

It's all on tonight’s edition of Behind the Scenes with me Chris Thompson right here on Vision Australia Radio.

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