The Drawing Room

When faith and power collide, is it possible to avoid compromising your beliefs?

Tarik Saleh's new film, Boy from Heaven, was inspired by Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, but takes audiences to al-Azhar University in Cairo, where the death of the Grand Imam could change the power dynamics of the country.

In the Drawing Room he talks about the importance of truth in fiction and why he loves a country that doesn't love him back.

Representation is everything, it validates people and their experiences.

So what happens when a large part of a country's population don’t see themselves reflected in society? Arabs represent almost 21% of Israelis but there are still very few Arab-Israeli journalists in the newsroom. Haaretz, one of Israel’s major newspapers, is trying to change that.

In the Drawing Room, Noa Landau, the deputy editor-in-chief of Haaretz talks about the new initiative she's founded, Haaretz 21, that will give a voice to Arab-Israel writers.

Across installations, sculptures, and performance, food is front and centre in Elizabeth Willing's art.

Her new body of work, Forced Rhubarb, features hand-printed and embroidered linens, but also a large, looping floorwork made from brightly coloured sherbet-filled straws.

In the Drawing Room, Elizabeth talks about her own relationship with food, the surprising power of yeast, and how high-end dining compares to a gallery.

What would you do if you had one of the most dangerous men in the world handcuffed in a room and, for 20 minutes, it was just you and him?

That's the starting point of a new play, where two highway patrol officers accidentally arrest a powerful drug lord for speeding away from the jail he'd just broken out of.

Twenty Minutes With The Devil is based on real life events around the capture of El Chapo.

In the Drawing Room, playwrights and legal professors Desmond Manderson and Luis Gomez Romero talk about their approach to the stage.

The Jezabels were catapulted into the spotlight a decade ago when their debut album, Prisoner, won the 2011 Australian Music Prize and reached number two on the ARIA chart.

A lot has happened over those ten years, but the band have come back together for a national tour to celebrate the album and the chance to perform together again.

In the Drawing Room, Hayley Mary revisits those days in the studio and shares the ups and downs of a life in the music industry.

The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people have, for centuries, lived deep in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil.

First contact with the Brazilian state came in 1981, and it came with a great cost: disease and illness killed off half the tribe.

Their territory is meant to be protected, but instead they’re facing invasion, with settlers moving into the forest and claiming the land as their own, with chainsaws and with fire.

A new documentary, The Territory, filmed in part by the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau themselves, captures the struggle between the two groups.

On streets and in halls around Australia, remarkable dancers are coming together in battle.

This is the world of competitive street dance, where the challengers break and pop their way to the top.

A new documentary, Keep Stepping, follows two dancers in Sydney as they prepare for one of the year's biggest competitions.

In the Drawing Room, the director, Luke Cornish, introduces us to the scene and explores the community at its heart.

Are we doing enough to protect our children’s mental and physical wellbeing? 

It’s the tough question being tackled in a recent UNICEF report - Places and Spaces: Environments and children’s well-being.

Professor Fiona Stanley has long been a vocal advocate for the needs of children and their families and in 2003 she was named Australian of the Year in recognition of her public health work.

In The Drawing Room, Fiona talks about the report's findings and how over-consumption in some of the world’s richest countries is damaging our children’s environments.

The best songwriters tell us stories about the world around us, about shared experiences, but it's a rare treat when we get to hear about them and their story.

On her latest album, Home Video, Lucy Dacus, opens up about her own life, with songs that capture her coming of age, finding love, making friends and risking losing them.

In the Drawing Room, Lucy talks about the process of figuring out who she is and why she still writes in her journal.

When Ana Roxanne released her debut LP, Because of A Flower, in 2020, it provided a peaceful, meditative space for listeners to sit amongst the stress and the noise.

Inspired by her own personal story and the experience of identifying as intersex, it weaves complicated ideas into a deceptively simple sound.

In the Drawing Room, Ana explores resonant spaces and childhood influences.