Dancers Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo travelled great distances at a very young age to join The Australian Ballet. Here in Australia, they’ve risen to become award-winning artists and principals at the company — but they also found each other, beginning a fairy-tale romance and inspiring each other to new heights.

Also, in 2002, John Waters' brash and big-hearted musical comedy Hairspray was adapted for the Broadway stage. It won eight Tony Awards, including one for its director Jack O'Brien. Twenty years on, Jack is at the helm of a new revival here in Australia.

Welsh stage and screen star Michael Sheen is in Australia to perform in a new production of Peter Shaffer's classic play Amadeus and the Sydney Opera House. He's taken on the powerhouse role of Mozart's bitter and vengeful rival, Antonio Salieri.

Also, at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre, two new plays ask probing questions about what the Christmas message of generosity and hope means in an era of division, recession and climate change, and Jesus returns to earth as a transgender woman in the one-person play The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven.

Performer James Thiérrée takes audiences into surreal worlds that leave us pondering some big questions about life on Earth. As the son of two pioneers of contemporary circus and the grandson of Charlie Chaplin, it's no wonder James sees the world differently. His latest mind-bending work of physical theatre is called Room.

Also, Richard Jordan drops by to share the story of an actor who once starred in two productions simultaneously at London's National Theatre and we're joined by the author of Verdi, Opera, Women, Susan Rutherford, to discuss what women in the 19th century might have thought of La Traviata's ill-fated courtesan protagonist, Violetta.

Classical repertoire dominates Australian ballet seasons, but in the mid-20th century, new work was a key priority for Australian ballet companies. What has become of these works? Our Top 5 Arts resident Yvette Grant introduces us to the prolific choreographer Laurel Martyn (1916-2013) and we learn about Yvette's own mission to resurrect forgotten Australian ballets.

Also, to mark Barbra Streisand's 80th birthday, some of our favourite musical theatre performers are joined by symphony orchestras around the country for a celebration of Barbra's most memorable songs and we look at how Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker — now 130 years old — came to become a fixture of the Christmas calendar after having little impact in its native Russia.

British director Laurence Connor has a knack for knowing what audiences want. He has directed or revived some of the most successful musicals ever produced, including a hit new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's first musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Also, the Australian comic opera Love Burns by Graeme Koehne and Louis Nowra is revived by the State Opera of South Australia, and we meet Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Johnston, writer of First Casualty at Queensland Theatre, to find out what compelled the veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan to bring the brutality and complexity of war to the stage. 

Danish-British writer and comedian Sandi Toksvig has written books, plays, musicals, and she's the host of the ever-popular British quiz show QI. She is now touring Australia with her show Sandi Toksvig Live — an evening of comedy and stories from her extraordinary life. 

Also, we hear a scene from The Mentor, a new Australian play about an ageing star who begins tutoring a young actor, but personal and generational tensions soon boil over, and we learn about Takatāpui — a blistering one-person show from Māori artist Daley Rangi about the routine violence so many gender-nonconforming people face.

S. Shakthidharan's new play for Belvoir St Theatre, The Jungle and Sea, adds dimension to his award-winning epic, Counting and Cracking. The Jungle and the Sea also builds on Shakthidharan's deeply held belief that the arts, and theatre in particular, can unite communities. 

Also, Emilia Bassano pursued a career as a poet during William Shakespeare's time and a new play commissioned by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre argues that The Bard may have plagiarised Emilia's own work, and to mark the 100th anniversary of The Waste Land by TS Eliot, Identity Theatre will bring Eliot's multi-layered lament to the stage.

To ring in the holiday season, an award-winning production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is in Australia from London's famous Old Vic Theatre. It's directed by Matthew Warchus, who is also the director of Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda. 

Also, we gather the cast of Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical in our music studio to perform the big act one finale and we meet Alon Nashman, a Canadian theatre-maker who has just returned from treading the boards at a theatre festival in Ukraine.

Choreographer Stephanie Lake gets dancers to perform with a kind of joy and discipline which would hold the attention and the wonder of anyone. She currently has work on the way for the Sydney Dance Company, Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Festival, and even more in the pipeline.

Also, a company of dancers from war-torn Ukraine are now in Australia with a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and Adelaide's Restless Dance Theatre, which creates work by dancers with and without disability, take their collaboration with Chunky Move, Rewards for the Tribe, to the UK.

In the 1980s, Annette Shun Wah was at the cutting edge of Australian radio and television and was one of the first Asian Australians to host her own show. Now Annette is empowering a new generation of creative Australians at the OzAsia Festival.

Also, we meet a martial arts performer who tells her life story in an explosively physical theatre show called Action Star, and to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Black Theatre, we ask five First Nations artists what the next 50 years might have in store.