How to make it on Broadway, plus a twisted tale challenges these actors
What does it take to write a Tony-winning musical? Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are the friends and songwriting team behind big Broadway musicals like Ragtime and Anastasia. They're also voting members for New York City's famous theatre industry prize, the Tony Awards. They join us as Tony Awards season takes off.Back stage... The make up artist. Meet the veteran head of WHAM (that's wardrobe, hair and make-up) Fiona Cooper-Sutherland as she transforms Christine Anu into Hermes, the silver god for the musical Hadestown. Hear Michael's interview with Anais Mitchell the creator of Hadestown.In the classic play The Maids by Jean Genet, two servant sisters act out a sinister game -- playing at murdering their mistress. Then the mistress herself enters the plot. Canberra theatre company The Street is staging this absurdist and chilling drama. We hear from actors Christina Falsone, Sophia Marzano, Natasha Vickery and director Caroline Stacey. The original sound design is by Kimmo Vennonen.
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Getting under the skin of Edith Piaf with Nathalie Lermitte
Legendary French singer Edith Piaf was a firecracker of emotion. Gutsy and seductive, while underneath -- an intense fragility. That’s the legend. But what’s it like to play a legend, show after show, year after year? Cabaret singer Nathalie Lermitte has been inhabiting the icon Piaf for well over a decade.Top Shelf with Josh Piterman. Josh Piterman is an Australian musical theatre star who’s used to donning all kinds of masks, especially as the Phantom of the Opera on London's West End. He’s also a certified meditation teacher and he’s just written a self-help book, about dropping the mask and being authentic. He takes us through the music and thinkers who've changed his life.Plus — more masks!Gail Evans and Nicky Fearn are Darwin local theatre legends. Now they’re presenting something completely different from their usual humorous, physical-theatre plays — Fair Punishment, a story based on a chilling, gothic Canadian novel that’s told through masked performance. We hear a reading performed by Merlynn Tong.
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Meet Margo Kane, a legend of Canadian theatre + a hit Spanish movie on stage
When Cree-Salteaux theatre-maker Margo Kane started trying out for theatre gigs in Canada in the 1970s, there were so few roles for Indigenous actors, she ended up auditioning for the same part more than once. That all changed when she wrote her own one woman show, Moonlodge that became a classic of Canadian theatre. She's in Australia to show her new one-woman show, and reflect on her career.Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was a big international hit for the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar in the 1980s. Now it's a crazy, funny, kitschy musical coming to Sydney's Hayes Theatre. We talk about the impact of the film and how director and performer Alex Berlage and Grace Driscoll are bringing it to life in 2025.New play Thirst, by Barbara Hostalek, is set in a lonely run-down country pub called The Glass Slipper somewhere in Western Australia. The place is on its last legs. But maybe the new owners can turn it around with a high stakes karaoke night! Actors Leah Pigram, Jarrad Inman and Maitland Schnaars from Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company perform a scene.For our series Back Stage, we meet international set designer Anna Cordingley, who hand draws her designs among many other talents.
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The Black Woman of Gippsland flips the script on a Victorian mystery
Playwright Andrea James has researched a story from the 1840s, in which colonial newspapers suggested that a 'white woman' – maybe the survivor of a shipwreck – had been taken captive by Gunaikurnai people in what is now eastern Victoria. Andrea interrogates the legend in a riveting new play called The Black Woman of Gippsland.In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two gruelling years in Reading Gaol, for being homosexual. The experience broke his health and spirit, and towards the end of his ordeal he wrote an impassioned 80-page letter called De Profundis ('from the depths'). Acclaimed actor and singer Paul Capsis is performing the letter on stage.Athol Fugard wrote influential plays about the injustices of South Africa’s racist Apartheid system on everyday people, for decades. Fugard died last month and fellow playwright and scholar Anthony Akerman tells Michael about his work and impact.
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The Wrong Gods weighs the cost of 'progress' on a mother and daughter
S. Shakthidharan's last play Counting and Cracking was a massive hit, an epic tale of one Sri Lankan Tamil family and their involvement in world-change events. Now he returns with The Wrong Gods, a story about a mother and daughter in India whose lives are about to be ripped apart by industrial agriculture. Should economic growth come at the cost of a sustainable and ancient way of life? Shakthi is joined by actor Radhika Mudaliyar. 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. First broadcast November 2024.
Australia