The Stage Show

We preview the Melbourne Cabaret Festival with artistic director Dolly Diamond and live performances, we travel to Hobart to attend Night Mass — Dark Mofo's "liturgical rave", choreographer and student Isabella Whāwhai Mason discusses her "performance ritual" that separates audiences based on their skin colour, and Canadian theatre star Ramin Karimloo performs live ahead of his Melbourne and Sydney concerts with Anna O'Byrne.

Experimental theatre makers The Rabble work with children from St Martins Youth Arts Centre for Lone, theatre and cabaret actor Natalie Gamsu stars as the fictional love child of Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky in Carmen, Live or Dead, we celebrate the music of Carole King with Esther Hannaford, who plays her in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, we meet the passionate nonprofessional artists involved with the Croatian Cultural Artistic Association "Lado" and master of the oud Joseph Tawadros performs live for us.

Australian pianist Barney McAll's arrangements of Doris Akers' gospel songs feature at this year's Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's Fury comes to the Red Stitch Actors' Theatre.

We drop into a reunion of the original Australian cast of Cats, Ian Wilkes and Michael Leslie discuss Ochre Contemporary Dance Company's new production 3.3, Priscilla star David Harris shares his Top Shelf, and lost Yiddish songs from the darkest days of World War II debut on stage.

The arts community rallies around La Mama Theatre after a devastating fire, Peter Carey's 1981 novel Bliss adapted for the stage, playwright Alana Valentine outlines her creative process in Bowerbird, and Claudia Lawson reviews Sydney Dance Company's ab [intra].

Swooping Duck perform live ahead of their concert at Stonnington Jazz, Simone De Beauvoir inspires Jillian Murray and Suzanne Chaundy's new play De Stroyed, international theatre commentator Richard Jordan explains the influence of The Oliviers and The Tonys, and Lisa Maree Southgate on her "musical memoir" Beware of Boys at this year's Anywhere Theatre Festival.

Black Swan State Theatre Company brings Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll back to the stage, our regular theatre commentator Kate Mulvany reflects on the past, present and future of Australian playwriting, Jada Alberts directs a new production of her play Brothers Wreck, and Jodee Mundy discusses adapting her memories of growing up in a Deaf family into the stage production Personal.

Bosom buddies Nancye Hayes and Todd McKenney perform for us, we go behind the scenes at Chunky Move for a sneak peak at Common Ground, Professor David Throsby discusses Australia's cultural policy, and we meet a group of people swing dancing for the love of it.

Natalie Gamsu stars as the fictional love child of Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky in Carmen, Live or Dead, Belvoir's Eamon Flack adapts a Russian classic in his play Sami in Paradise, actors with disabilities Scott Price, Erin Kyan and Emma J Hawkins fight for inclusion, and Red Stitch stage the Australian premiere of French Canadian comedic thriller Right Now.

We hear about Monkey Baa's adaptation of Jackie French's Josephine Wants to Dance, Hugo Weaving and Kip Williams give us the lowdown on the STC production of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, we hear a live performance of Genevieve Lacey's new work Nest, and we meet US comedian Joel Kim Booster.