STAGES with Peter Eyers

Diana McLean has had a long career in TV, Film and Theatre and is best known by the public for her role of  Vivienne Jeffries in the iconic TV Soap,  The Young Doctors.
On her return to Australia, after 16 years in UK and France, she appeared in many TV shows including, Water Rats, Murder Call, All Saints, Backberner, Number 96, Wonderland, and is still remembered for playing Bess O'Brien in Neighbours. 
Her miniseries credits include Ben Hall, The Norman Lindsay Series, Winner Takes All, and A Model Daughter. 
Theatre work has included; The Cold Child for Anthony Skuse at Griffin, Colder for Lachlan Philpot at Griffin, Love & Money at The Old Fitz, Three Sisters for Kate Retz, & Cry Havoc at ATYP, Julius Caesar for Anthony Skuse at The New, Other Desert Cities at The Ensemble Theatre (2015) and a national tour playing Florence Foster Jenkins in the play Glorious.
Diana reprised her role of  Vera in 4000 miles, twice in 2014 for which she was nominated as Best Leading Actress at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Most recently Diana has appeared in the World Premiere of Joanna Erskine’s new Australian play, Air (Old 505) and was part of the ensemble cast of The Humans at the Old Fitz.
She joins STAGES for a long over-due catch up, and to reflect on a life-time telling stories.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

The Arts are widely recognised as a unique tool for human expression and offer a valuable contribution to society. They define our humanity.
For anyone working in the Arts, it is a wonderful and fulfilling profession. But a creative or performance career will present considerable emotional challenge. Navigating an industry with precarious employment opportunities means that artists (on and off the stage), may experience mental health concerns, anxiety or stress. 
Artists are required to manage a role that brings huge expectations from colleagues, self and potential employers. Work is not guaranteed, and this can place huge demands on day to day survival. 
Resilience, belief, and confidence are sought in creative industries, contrasted alongside a need for vulnerability, which provides a window to access the emotional states that support creativity and authentic performance. The Arts are a very human expression.
Sophie Carter is a qualified counsellor and coach, who supports those who work within all sectors of the arts. She discovered a passion for music and performing at a young age. Finding her calling in theatre as a teenager, she never looked back and went on to enjoy a nearly 20-year career as a professional actor, singer, and dancer.
 Sophie has also had roles behind the scenes as a stage manager, an assistant director, an assistant producer, and a vocal coach.
 She continues to perform regularly in the contemporary live music scene and has ridden the turmoil of the Covid and post-Covid era alongside her fellow performers in an ever-shifting landscape.

With two decades experience working in the professional theatre, music and film/tv industries, Sophie brings her lived experience with the arts to the counselling experience to help her clients navigate this wonderful but challenging industry.

The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Barry Creyton began his career at the age of 17 in theatre and in radio in Australia and by age 20, was playing leads on stage, and in national radio productions.  He also hosted his own weekly radio program devoted to theatre news and interviews. At 21, he made his Australian television debut as Lorenzo in a national television production of The Merchant of Venice.   
For three seasons, he starred in the TV series The Mavis Bramston Show.  This ground  breaking show, the highest rated in the history of Australian television, dealt with topical and political satire.
Creyton relocated to England for twelve years playing comedy and dramatic roles in London's West End - including Don's Party (Royal Court), Roger's Last Stand (Duke of York's), Ten Years Hard (Mayfair), Urban Guerilla  (Soho Poly), a revival of the musical Salad Days, and Liz, a musical based on Aristophanes' Lysistrata as well as several revues and the National Tour of Abelard and Heloise.
On his return to Australia, Creyton starred in many theatre productions - Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce, Season's Greetings and Absurd Person Singular, Frayn's Noises Off, and in Pack Of Lies, Side By Side By Sondheim, The Owl And The Pussycat, Suddenly At Home, The Philanthropist, and played twins in the comedy-thriller Corpse.
He guest starred on many popular TV episodics. These roles were generally amorous cads or big-business villains - characters at odds with the comedies he played on the stage.  They included The Restless Years, The Young Doctors, Skyways, Cop Shop, The Sullivans, I Married a Bachelor, Cuckoo in the Nest, as well as guest star roles in TV movies, Image of Death, All at Sea, the Michael Powell feature, They're a Weird Mob and the BBC's Robert Louis Stevenson in Australia.
He turned to directing, with the musical Nunsense which broke box office records all over Australia, and employed two companies playing simultaneously.
A motorcycle accident during the run of Corpse resulted in a badly broken leg.  The long recuperation period enabled him to write a stage comedy, Double Act. 
Since 1990, Creyton has worked almost exclusively in the United States, principally as writer and director. He relocated from New York to Los Angeles when commissioned to write a movie of the week for Hearst Television, while his off Broadway revue Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know ran for two and a half years in New York. His critically acclaimed adaptation of Noël Coward's Peace in Our Time for the Antaeus Theatre Company in L.A. received the Ovation Award and the L.A. Weekly Annual Theatre Award; the L. A. Times voted the production among the best world theatre of the year.
He has appeared on stage at the Antaeus Theatre in Balzac's Cousin Bette, Shaw's The Doctors Dilemma and Moliere's School For Wives  and as Apollo in The Curse of Oedipus.
Creyton returns to Australia periodically for theatre engagements, starring in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, directing and starring in his own plays, Later Than Spring and Valentine's Day (since produced in several languages and, along with his Double Act, in constant repertoire in Europe), and in 2007 he returned to Sydney's Ensemble Theatre to star in Peter Quilter's play Glorious, and again in 2010 in Quilter's Duets, in which he played four diverse characters.
His young adult novels, The Dogs of Pompeii and Nero Goes to Rome, co-authored with American writer Vaughan Edwards, are published by Random House, and his novel Murder is Fatal, an affectionate parody of noir movies, was published in 2017.
His novel The View from Olympus Mons, was published in 2022 by NineStar Press.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Luke Joslin is a graduate of The University of Western Sydney and The Actors College of Theatre and Television, Luke has forged a successful career in both musical theatre and straight drama, as well as being highly sort after as a director.
Luke worked as an Actor for 15 years. His extensive credits include the national tour of Peter Pan Goes Wrong, The Play That Goes Wrong, both for Lunchbox and Jon Nicholls, Brigadoon for Production Company, Machu Picchu for State Theatre Company of South Australia, Pinnochio for Windmill and Sydney Theatre Company, Threepenny Opera for Malthouse and Sydney Theatre Company, 25th Anniversary production of Les Miserables for Michael Cassel and Cameron McIntosh, Annie and Dr Zhivago both for GFO, Avenue Q for Arts Asia, Assassins for Neil Gooding, Dirty Dancing for Jacobsens, Titanic for Seabiscuit and Guys and Dolls for Dennis Smith.
In 2009 he won the Helpmann and Greenroom Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Nicky/Trekky in Avenue Q. Luke was also Nominated for a Greenroom Award for Best Male in a Supporting Role in 2018 for Brigadoon.
Directorial credits include Annie for Riverside Theatre, Educating Rita for Seymour Centre, Thank You For Being a Friend for Neil Gooding and Matt Henderson, Songs for a New World (Melbourne and Sydney) for Blue Saint and Hayes Theatre, Giggle and Hoot Live show for ABC and Live Nation, In the Heights (Hayes and Sydney Opera House) for Blue Saint and Sydney Opera House in which he was nominated for a Helpmann Award and Sydney Theatre Award for Best Director, Resident Director for Shrek the Musical for GFO, Les Miserables for Packemin Productions and Riverside Theatre, Revival Director – Otello with Opera Australia, Resident Director – Cinderella The Musical for John Frost at XRoads and Opera Australia and Bells are Ringing with Neglected Musicals. 
Luke also spearheaded the Riverside Theatre Digital Concert series where he conceptualised and directed six shows back to back. Luke most recently was show director for both Jimmy Rees’s Not that Kinda Viral Tour and the Swag on the Beat Live Show.
He presently helms the exciting new production of Grease which has made its way to Sydney following a triumphant season in Melbourne. And the next stop is Perth. Luke Joslin joined STAGES to reflect on his journey from actor to director; and why Grease is still the word!
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Francesca Zambello is an internationally recognised director of opera and theatre. She is the Artistic Director of The Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center; a role she has occupied since 2012. 

In 2022 she retired from a celebrated role as the General Director of The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., having been appointed in 2010.

Francesca has also served as the Artistic Advisor to the San Francisco Opera from 2005–2011 and as the Artistic Director of the Skylight Theatre from 1987–1992.

She has since staged new productions at major theatres, festivals and opera houses in Asia, Australia, South America, Europe and the USA. Collaborating with outstanding artists and designers and promoting emerging talent, she takes a special interest in new music theatre works, innovative productions, and in producing theatre and opera for wider audiences.

Francesca Zambello has been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her contribution to French culture and the Russian Federation’s medal for Service to Culture. Other honours for her work include three Olivier Awards from the London Society of Theatres and two Evening Standard Awards. The French Grand Prix des Critiques was awarded to her twice for her work at the Paris Opera. She has received the Medallion Society Award from the San Francisco Opera recognizing 30 years of work for the company.

For Opera Australia, Francesca Zambello directed the 2012 Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour production of La Traviata, as well as The Love for Three Oranges in 2016, and West Side Story on Sydney Harbour in 2019, for which she received the Helpmann Award for best direction of a musical.

Ms. Zambello has also served as an adjunct professor at Yale University. An American who grew up in Europe, she speaks French, Italian, German, and Russian. She began her career as an Assistant Director to the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Francesca Zambello lives in New York with her wife, Faith Gay, a founding partner of Selendy & Gay and son, Jackson.

www.francescazambello.com

The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Michael Lavine is a Broadway Performance Coach and Sheet Music Expert. He has also worked as a musical director, pianist, vocal coach and singer all over the world. He is very much; a Music Man!
Michael gives master classes on auditioning in New York, Los Angeles, Australia and Martha’s Vineyard. He has worked several times at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. 
Accompanying many artists, he has worked regularly with Heather MacRae on her show about her father, Gordon and has accompanied Broadway and television star Bryan Batt in New Orleans, at 54 Below, Feinstein’s and the Metropolitan Room. He musically directed Bryan’s show Batt on a Hot Tin Roof at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in Australia, touring subsequently to Melbourne and Sydney. 
Michael regularly plays for the Outer Critics Circle Awards and musically directed the Broadway Cares Teddy Bear Auction for its entire 15-year run. Michael has conducted orchestras in Wichita, Kansas, Traverse City, Michigan, and Beverly, Mass., among other cities. 
He co-produced and musically directed the American premiere recording of HONK! at the York Theatre. Michael served as musical director for the Comden & Green musical Billion Dollar Baby starring Kristin Chenoweth, Marc Kudisch and Debbie Gravitte and the Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner musical Carmelina. He has shared the stage with Mimi Hines and Peter Howard (his mentor) at the Kennedy Center in a Rodgers & Hart revue, This Funny World. 
Michael is known for owning one of the largest privately held sheet music collections in the world, and is frequently called upon for his extensive knowledge, and is celebrated for preserving and archiving the musical theatre and American songbook.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Eddie Grey was born and raised in Sydney. An accomplished musician and talented performer, he graduated from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts and quickly garnered an impressive list of credits in productions of Spring Awakening (for the Sydney Theatre Company), and commercial productions of Legally Blonde, Wicked (as Boq) and The Book of Mormon.
Whilst at WAAPA he started writing his own material. His first work was Frau Fangus’ Revenge, a musical about a masochistic Weimar-era piano teacher who falls in love with her student and makes the student murder her husband. Y’know.  Standard musical comedy fodder!
Following his successful forays on the Australian stage, he took the plunge and moved to New York, where he has performed in the National tour of The Book of Mormon - a show in which he also made his Broadway debut. 
Eddie recently completed a stint in the Broadway run of the musical Harmony, written by Barry Manilow. Both gigs came about under fascinating circumstances. 
It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that Eddie really started writing again, completing a postgraduate course in screenwriting for television at UCLA. The first short film he wrote and produced, titled Weather or Not, was based on a story by David Sedaris that Eddie optioned from the author himself. It went on to a successful festival run and distribution and also paved the way for his second short, The Singing Telegram which had its LA premiere at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. 
Currently, he has a television project under development with Aurora Pictures in Sydney and another with Kilo Pictures in London.
STAGES caught up with Eddie on a recent visit to New York where we learned so much more about his talent to amuse, and craft engaging theatre and film.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Judith Hoddinott has made considerable impact as an educator and a theatre designer across all disciplines. 
Training at the University of New England and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, her design work has been seen complementing a myriad of stages with companies as diverse as the Sydney Theatre Company, GFO, CDP, Jacobsen Entertainment, Playbox, Opera Australia, Performing Lines, Theatre of the Deaf, New Moon, Hunter Valley, STC, Marian Street, & Ensemble theatre companies, and the Flying Fruit Fly Circus.
Judith has taught Theatre Design at East Sydney Technical College, University of Western Sydney, University of Technology, Sydney and NIDA. She currently teaches at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts.
Theatrical fare that has soared with costume and/or set designs by Judith include Phedre, Away, Oleanna, Antony and Cleopatra, A Delicate Balance, The Merchant of Venice, Gary’s House, After Dinner, The Killing of Sister George, A Hard God, Macbeth, Sight Unseen, Emerald City, Death of a Salesman, The Sunshine Boys, Wit, I Ought to Be In Pictures, Aunty and Me, I’m Not Rappaport, The Heartbreak Kid, and Arms and the Man. 
Musical Theatre includes Guys and Dolls, A Chair in the Landscape, Shout!, Footloose, Il Trovatore, A Broad With Two Men, Working, Only Heaven Knows, The Man from Mukinupin and South Pacific.
Judith offers abundant knowledge on the processes of design, and teaching, in this illuminating episode of the STAGES podcast.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

On January 14th we learned of the passing of Theatre Impresario, Martin McCallum. He was a featured guest on the STAGES podcast in January 2019. The podcast was only a year old, but Martin with his enthusiasm and vigour for supporting new ventures was keen at my first suggestion. I am so honoured that we were able to record some of his story in this episode.
Martin resided in Australia for the past 20 years. He was brought here originally when overseeing the transfer of global hit musicals such as Evita, to Australian shores; working alongside the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust.
The relationships he established in Australia would enable him to successfully bring Cameron Mackintosh’s four juggernaut musicals to our theatres in the 80s and 90s; Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon.
Martin guided Mackintosh’s overseas production ventures and managed Australian and New York offices. He worked closely with Mackintosh on restoring The Prince Edward and Prince of Wales theatres in London’s West End.
He commenced his life in the theatre as a stage manager and bit-part actor in regional repertory theatre in the UK, working his way up the ranks to joining Laurence Olivier and the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1971.
Adept at all technical elements of the theatre, and proving himself as an accomplished manager, Martin oversaw the practical and technical transfer of the National to the South Bank building in 1976.
He was indeed a giant and gentleman of the theatre. And a lovely bloke and treasured friend to many of us.
Vale Martin McCallum (April 6, 1950 - January 14, 2024)
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

Groundhog Day The Musical made its Australian Premiere at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre on Thursday February 1st - (incidentally February 2nd is the actual Groundhog Day).

Direct from its record-breaking return season at London’s Old Vic, the Australian production will play a 13-week season in Melbourne. 

Groundhog Day the Musical is a gloriously joyful and heart-warming production from the award-winning minds of Australia’s one and only Tim Minchin AM, the writer of the iconic 1993 film Danny Rubin and director Matthew Warchus. 

Broadway Veteran Andy Karl returns to Groundhog Day after his critically-acclaimed reprisal at London’s Old Vic as ‘Phil Connors,’ the role he originated on Broadway which won him an Olivier Award and a Tony Nomination; the third of his Tony nominations.
He was previously seen in the Broadway revival of Into The Woods as both ‘Rapunzel’s Prince’ and ‘Cinderella’s Prince/The Wolf,’ and leading the Broadway musical Pretty Woman as ‘Edward Lewis.’
Other notable theatre credits include the Broadway revival of On the Twentieth Century, the title role in Rocky, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 9 to 5, Legally Blonde, Wicked, The Wedding Singer, and Saturday Night Fever.
On television he appeared in Season 17 of Law & Order: SVU as “Sergeant Mike Dodds.”,  and also The Good Fight and Blue Bloods. 
The production also features Elise McCann, who is most well-known for originating the role of Miss Honey in the Australian production of Matilda for which she won the 2016 Helpmann Award.
Her breadth of musical theatre experience is extensive with celebrated credits that include Lucille Ball in Everybody Loves Lucy, Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along and most recently for her performance as Donna in the 2023 20th Anniversary Tour of MAMMA MIA! the Musical.  Further theatre credits include The Last Five Years, The Wedding Singer; Oklahoma, Brigadoon, South Pacific, Doctor Zhivago, Fiddler on the Roof, Falsettos, Into The Woods, Little Women and My Fair Lady. 
Andy and Elise were recently in Sydney where we caught up to discuss the extraordinary show they’re currently navigating and the many joys and challenges of a career in musical theatre.
Groundhog Day - The Musical plays the Princess Theatre in Melbourne until April 20th.
The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au