S. Shakthidharan's award-winning epic, Counting and Cracking, won seven Helpmann Awards and drew a huge audience to a story that many of them knew little about. Five years after its world premiere, Counting and Cracking is on in Melbourne as part of the RISING festival, after which it transfers to Sydney's Carriageworks and then New York.

In 1972, a lecturer at the University of Adelaide was attacked at a gay beat and drowned. 50 years on, an oratorio shone a light into this appalling story and how his death changed Australia. Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan is now being restaged by Opera Australia.