In her memoir Oh Miriam!, the British-Australian actress, writer and comedian Miriam Margolyes shares hugely entertaining stories from her life with her trademark wit and disarming candour. This year she brought those stories — and more — to the stage, touring her show Oh Miriam! right across Australia.

Former prime minister Paul Keating was one of the great parliamentary performers. His ruthless wit and self-confidence take centre stage in Jonathan Biggins' hugely popular tribute to Keating, The Gospel According to Paul. It's a role that Jonathan — an actor, singer, writer, director and co-creator of The Wharf Revue — has been performing, on and off, for five years.

Legendary photographer William Yang has spent decades transforming his photography into captivating live theatre via the medium of the slide show. In his latest performance, Milestone, which is coming to the Sydney Festival and Asia TOPA, Yang shares a lifetime of stories, from his boyhood in Cairns, to his various 'coming-outs', to the freedom — and fear — of life as a gay man in Sydney in the 1970s and 80s.

Also, Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera tells the duo's dazzling story of fame and tragedy, and we meet actors Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz as they compare notes on playing the role of Hamlet.

In 1997, Australian dancer Marc Brew's life was changed forever by a devastating car accident that left him paralysed from the chest down. He tells his story in the deeply personal An Accident / A Life. Over the past 27 years, Brew has redefined the possibilities of dance, captivating audiences worldwide with performances and choreography that challenge the boundaries of the art form.

On Top Shelf, actor Christie Whelan Browne shares the performances that shaped her, while mixed reality artist Troy Rainbow invites audiences to confront experiences of psychosis through his groundbreaking work.

The nine-time Tony Award nominee Bartlett Sher has this year directed Robert Downey Jr's Broadway debut and a London revival of Cole Porter's 1948 musical Kiss Me, Kate. Kiss Me, Kate is based upon Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, so how palatable is this controversial musical to a 21st century audience?

Also, Wanderings is a new play that delves into the lives of a transgender son and his mother who is living with dementia, and Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County comes to Belvoir St.

Peter and the Starcatcher, by the American writer Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Water for Elephants), is a Tony Award-winning play inspired by J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stories. It reveals how Peter, the Lost Boys, and Captain Hook came to find themselves in Neverland, and it puts a new character named Molly at the centre of the action.

Also, the big sound of a cappella Sacred Harp singing will ring out in an Australian theatre this month in a new play called The Hall, and we pay tribute to our recent guest Roz Hervey, who has died. Roz was a celebrated dancer, choreographer, director and, most recently, Creative Producer at Restless Dance Theatre.

Some theatre people constantly surprise you, and their names alone can spur you to buy a ticket. Sheridan Harbridge is one such artist. She blew audiences away in Suzie Miller's Prima Facie, and she's now a writer or director on four upcoming productions: My Brilliant Career, Life in Plastic, A Model Murder and Phar Lap: The Musical.

Also, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs pay tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein in Showstoppers, and more than 40 years after the devastating Ash Wednesday bushfires, a community revisits the ordeal on stage in a play called Ash Wednesday. It will be read by Shane Jacobson, Pia Miranda and community members at this year's Mountain Festival.

In the 40 years since their history-making perfect score that earned them a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, figure skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean have toured the globe presenting ice dancing spectaculars. Now, the pair plan to hang up their skates for good, following a farewell tour they are calling Torvill & Dean: Our Last Dance.

This year, one of the greatest shows on earth has been the US presidential race. The theatrics employed to shift allegiances, manipulate audiences and inspire voters call into question the line between politics and performance. The influential social and cultural thinker Richard Sennett turns his mind to these and other topics in his book, The Performer: Art, Life, Politics.

Death is not a very funny subject. Yet, comedian, writer and musician Eric Idle has spent 60 years showing us the funny side of our all-too-fleeting lives. The Monty Python member is now touring Australia with his show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! He's also written a new book about the creation of his musical, Spamalot.

Also, as we, as a society, adjust to the ways in which artificial intelligence will affect our everyday lives, playwright José Rivera brings us a clever new play called Your Name Means Dream, and Opera Australia is celebrating the essential role of the opera chorus in a show called Chorus!

Mina Morita is on a mission to inspire a new crop of Australian theatre directors and to open our stages to a wider range of audiences and artists. She's in Australia to lead a program called Staging the World, and she's directing the Australian premiere season of Yoga Play at the National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre.

Also, theatre maker Wang Chong's acclaimed one-man show Made in China 2.0 returns to Australia. We find out what's on his Top Shelf. And we explore the origins of Bollywood dance with Professor Pallabi Chakravorty, and Ashley Lobo, a choreographer of more than 20 Bollywood films and the director of A Passage to Bollywood at the OzAsia Festival.

The very first Australian production of the smash-hit coming-of-age musical Dear Evan Hansen has just opened in Sydney. The Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including one for the show's book writer, Steven Levenson. Steven also wrote the screenplay for Tick, Tick… Boom! — a musical film inspired by the life of Jonathan Larson (Rent). 

Also, Mary Coustas is the creator of the big-haired, outspoken Greek Australian Effie who first took on the world in a stage show called Wogs Out of Work in 1987. She recently revealed a new persona on stage: her own, in her one-woman show This Is Personal. Her new show as Effie, now on tour, is called Upyourselfness.