SmartArts

Richard kicks off this week’s epic show with Irish band, The Mary Wallopers. The cheeky, rowing brothers, Charles and Andrew Hendy, talk sibling rivalry, genre shifting, and their anticipation of Ireland’s global domination…

Professor Lisa Given is on the line to celebrate Dungeons & Dragons 50th Birthday. What is the legacy of DnD and tabletop roleplaying? Lisa’s recent research goes into the mental health benefits and value of playing it.

Naser Shaktour, the Festival Director of the Palestinian Film Festival 2024, calls in to give us a program overview and talks through why it is so important to engage with Palestinian media right now. The Palestinian Film Festival starts at Cinema Nova on March 14.

Actor, Yvette Turner, who stars in The Hearth Theatre’s iteration of ‘The 39 Steps’, gives an insight to the tongue-in-cheek-love-letter coming to us at Chapel off Chapel from March 8.

PHOTO 2024 Curator, Brendan McCleary, and visiting artist, Clifford Prince King, give a big festival overview chat with a focus on the regional weekend on March 7-10.

The dangerously in sync Helen Hopkins and Carolyn Bock from The Shift Theatre tell us about their new production ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ at La Mama. How devilishly fun, darling!

PLUS The brilliant Anne-Marie Peard reviews the latest and greatest theatre performances around town.

Richard Watts is back in the studio to chat to director Gary Abrahams and actress Evelyn Krape on the production of Yentl, an adaptation of a Yiddish short story.

Plus, S.Shakthidharan, the writer and associate director of Counting and Cracking for the 2024 RISING festival; conductor Carlo Antonioli visits the studio to discuss the new performance of When We Were Young at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, showing off new and emerging composers; and Richard celebrates a new achievement with Bruce Gladwin, the artistic director and Co-CEO of Back to Back Theatre, recipients of the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.

Into the last hour, Richard catches up with Anne-Marie Peard on all things theatre in Melbourne, and co-curatorsa Tilly Boleyn and Bern Hall, aboout the new new exhibition of Not Natural at Science Gallery Melbourne.

Jess McEvoy talks about their solo rock musical, 'The Show,' and the way that the show came about naturally after years of performing as a singer-songwriter between Naarm and New York City.

Sandrine Lescourant, dancer and performer in Oona Doherty's piece 'Hope Hunt and the Acension into Lazarus', discusses the way the work looks at suburban youth culture in Northern Ireland, focussing on young men and the 'id of the Northern Irish chav.'

Director Kitan Petkovski speaks about his 7-hour theatre work, 'The Inheritance,' and how this piece honours the importance of elders in queer spaces, especially gay men in a post-AIDs crisis context.

Hosted by Richard Watts

SmartArts' 19th birthday was celebrated on the day of broadcast (December 14, 2023), which was also Richard's last show for 2023!

Richard is joined by Liam James, Deputy Director of Linden New Art. They discuss the gallery's Postcard Show 2023-24; how it celebrates the hobby artists, makes art accessible and defies the meaning of “postcard”.

Richard also hears about fortyfivedownstairs’ 2024 program from Artistic Director, Cameron Lukey.

Plus, everything you need to know about the Women’s Circus Member Cabaret as told by Kate Fryer, co-director, and Hanne Grant, communications manager and circus performer, in the lead up to their annual showcase.

Artist Agnieszka Pilat on her optimism towards AI in art and walking Richard Watts through the process of training three robot dogs to oil paint, for her new exhibition at the NGV Triennial; Ersin Han Ersin, director of Marshmallow Laser Feast collective on their latest installation, ‘Works of Nature’ at ACMI, a hypnotic display of rhythmic lights, exploring the connection between humans and nature; Director of Sydney Festival, Olivia Ansell unveils the exciting new line up for the festival in 2024, focusing on the theme of ‘water and weaving’.

Writer and director Glenn Shea on his unabashed new play ‘MI: WI 3027,’ unpacking the unlikely friendship between an Indigenous soldier and a Jewish-German ethnologist and prisoner of war, as they bond over the notions of freedom and country; Curator Rona Green unveils ‘Whereabouts: Printmakers Respond,’ a new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, delving into the connections between artists and their sense of home; Richard Watts reflects on the importance of mental health in the arts space, with Head of Program from the Arts Wellbeing Collective, Jim Rimmer

Ewan McEoin, the Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, NGV and lead curator on Triennial for a NGV Triennial overview chat; Primal Screen’s Flick Ford &  Zero G’s Rob Jan talking about the legacy of film Blade Runner ahead of Blade Runner live at Hamer Hall; Jennifer Monk & Lisa Dallinger present Slightly Cracked, the new show from Girls Act Good showing from Nov 2-12 at La Mama; Plus, New Reality - a multisensory futurist installation by MaggZ at the Immigration Museum.

Ruth McKenzie, Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival gives an overview of the exciting new festival program; Dynamic duo, choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer Robin Fox astonish Richard with their exhilarating performance art piece, Manifesto, featuring a frenzied nine-person troop dancing to the beat of nine frantic drummers; Performer and choreographer Thomas E.S Kelly on his playful First Nations performance art piece, Weredingo, exploring identity through the historical practice of Indigenous 'shapeshifting', and its status as fantastical and irrational in a contemporary Western society; Ukrainian-Australian photographer, Daniel Hasset brings Ukrainian stories to the forefront of viewers’ minds with his exhibition, ЖИТТЯ, battling the Australian ‘news fatigue’ towards the ever-present war in Ukraine

Ania Reynolds & Alisa Tanaka-King join Richard to talk about their show 'Dumplings Darling' and their approach to cultural sharing; being un-pretentious and inclusionary, using the cultural cross-section that is made up of food, music and storytelling.

Joining Richard next is Anna Louey, the creator of 'A Dodgeball Named Desire', a show set up as a dodgeball game between theatre performers and professional sportspeople that playfully investigates the competition between theatre and sport in Australia and delves into the divide between high art (theatre) vs high spectacle (sports).

Lastly, but definitely not leastly, playwright Patricia Cornelius & actor Darcy Kent talk about Patricia's new work 'In The Club', which makes a case study of and interrogates the idea of 'pack mentality' and the power it holds in society, especially in so-called 'Australian' culture. The show is also designed as a vehicle to bear witness to the bad behaviour that comes with pack mentality.

Hosted by Richard Watts

Writer and performer Candy Bowers reveals the horrors of type 2 diabetes and its disproportionate effect on Black communities, in her afro-futuristic, genre-bending show, ‘Sweet Mama’; Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, AO, On her composition of ‘Eumeralla, a War Requiem for Peace,’ written in the Gunditjmara language to commemorate Indigenous lives lost in the forgotten resistance war of Eumeralla, performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Lead artist Emilie Walsh on Laneway Learning’s comic trails, featuring glow-in-the-dark comic panels illuminating city walls; Wellington-based dance-theatre artist, Daniel Nodder on his cosmic performance exploring the vast expanse of the universe in ‘Only Bones’.