The Stage Show

The best theatre is always the result of a great collaboration and Neil Armfield found the ideal collaborator in Kate Champion — choreographer, director and founder of the dance theatre company Force Majeure. The pair's work includes Cloudstreet and The Ring Cycle.

Also, we consider what complete silence might finally allow us to hear in Will O'Mahony's play Minneapolis and we question how far reinterpreting the classics can take us in Caesar at La Boite.

Neil Armfield cut his teeth at Sydney's Nimrod Theatre Company before co-founding Belvoir, but his earliest forays into theatre-making were a way to escape some challenges at home. He shares his story with Mark Howett as one of our Legends of Australian Theatre.

Also, we visit a war-torn city and a family confronting the cost of survival in Samah Sabawi's play Them and we meet two comedians who have found the funny side of tragedy, bringing personal stories of grief and illness into their stand-up.

We meet an artist whose canvas has been some of the world's biggest stages, but his palette is ever-inspired by Noongar Boodjar. For our next conversation between Australian stage icons, Kylie Bracknell sits down with designer and director Mark Howett.

Also, as part of our High School Playlist series, we travel from London in 1959 to Alice Springs in 2039 and encounter a fish falling from the sky in Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling.

Taking on Macbeth is a mammoth task for any director but try translating and performing it entirely in Noongar. In our next conversation between legends of Australian theatre, Wesley Enoch meets Noongar actor, director and translator Kylie Bracknell (Kaarljilba Kaardn).

Also, we hear a scene from the world premiere of York at Black Swan State Theatre Company and visit performer Paul Capsis and director Chris Drummond in rehearsal for Brink's music-rich adaptation of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.

In the first of our conversations between legends of Australian theatre, the former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister, steals the spotlight to interview his partner, Noonuccal Nuugi playwright and director Wesley Enoch.

Also, David pays tribute to Australian ballet icon Lucette Aldous who recently died at the age of 82, and we travel to the tiny town of Gander in Canada to meet some of the real-life people whose generosity inspired the hit musical Come from Away.

Tom Stoppard and William Shakespeare loom large in the canon of English drama. Two new books explore their lives, their work, their driving forces and their impact on theatre.

Composer and performer Eddie Perfect's Broadway adventures included some of the highest highs and lowest lows of his career. Now with two Broadway credits and a Tony nomination on his CV, he's touring a new show of stories and songs: Introspective.

Also, Robyn Nevin has been a leading talent in Australian theatre for decades, but her latest role may be one of her toughest yet — in A German Life, she becomes Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to the Nazi minister for propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

American playwright Jen Silverman is a true believer in the power of theatre. She compares her first encounters with the theatre to walking into church. Her plays have enjoyed great success in Australia and now she has written her first novel, We Play Ourselves.

Also, Opera Queensland are on the road and looking to make opera fans of country music lovers with their show Are You Lonesome Tonight and as Melbourne returns to lockdown, we revisit our story about dancers training in isolation during the pandemic.

Since his Tony Award-winning performance as The Emcee in the musical Cabaret, Scottish performer Alan Cumming has been increasingly enamoured of the form, opening his own cabaret bar in New York and now taking charge of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

Also, we learn about the unifying power of roller derby in the play Ugly Virgins at the Blue Room Theatre in Perth and meet the gig economy workers involved in the new APHIDS theatre work about the hidden cost of convenience, Easy Riders.

The Wadawurrung story of Parrwang, a magpie that lifted the sky to bring light to the land, is now an opera. Parrwang Lifts the Sky is by the Yorta Yorta composer and singer Deborah Cheetham and presented by Victorian Opera.

Also, we visit a rehearsal of The Dispute, a work performed and co-created by children with experience of family separation, hear performance from the new Australian production of Chess and check in on London's West End theatres as they reopen their doors.