As a teenager in Belgium, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui grew up dancing with his friends in the street. He’s now a renowned choreographer with his own company and the director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, choreographing everything from pop music videos to the new show MANIFEST at Perth Festival - where members of the public can train alongside his dancers for a performance in the city’s Forrest Place.Can love exist between two people on opposite sides of the nuclear debate? In her new play Nucleus, Alana Valentine pits two passionately engaged scientists against each other, basing their arguments on real life interviews, but adding a nuclear force of attraction into the mix. We're also joined by Peter Kowitz playing Dr Gabriel Hulst. from the funny and vernacular Palawa/Pakana playwright, Nathan Maynard. In the era of AFL footballer Adam Goodes' famous war cry, two Aboriginal footy players in a regional club confront the personal cost of either staying quiet or speaking out about racism. We're joined by the show's star, Ngali Shaw (Wiradjuri, Murawari, Kunja) and director, and co-choreographer of the show's breathtaking football sequences, Isaac Drandic (Noongar). First broadcast March 2024
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Robyn Nevin on Agatha Christie's 'dark side' + a play about Julian Assange
Australian theatre legend Robyn Nevin is directing And Then There Were None, a classic murder mystery by Agatha Christie. She talks to Michael about the darkness in Christie's stories, her view on changing acting styles and how Robyn finds her 'inner clown'. Playwright Patricia Cornelius explains why she has five actors playing the world's most famous hacker — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in her new play TRUTH. She's joined by director Susie Dee.And you’ll discover a ballet about the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Michael speaks to Australian Ballet principal artist Callum Linnane, who first danced the part nine years ago in the ballet Nijinsky.
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54:03
Emma Rice's dark, rollicking Wuthering Heights
UK director Emma Rice thinks the classic novel Wuthering Heights has many contemporary resonances, particularly around the origins of the character Heathcliff. Rice turned the story into a rollicking play after successfully adapting other English folktales and films for the stage. She tells us about her career, which included briefly leading Shakespeare's Globe theatre before founding her own company Wise Children.Rwandan writer and director Dorcy Rugamba brings his moving theatre piece Hewa Rwanda: Letter to the absent to the Adelaide Festival. In it, he honours the family members he lost in the 1994 genocide, and the performance has a spiritual significance, accompanied by musician Majnun.Playwright Joanna Murray Smith joins actors Caroline Lee and Peter Houghton for a reading of a scene from her play Honour. Since it was first performed 30 years ago, Joanna says her perspective on the characters has changed. It's being staged at Red Stitch Theatre.
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54:04
How do you tell the world's longest tale 'Mahabharata', in five hours?
The Hindu epic Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world, a tale where gods and mortals dance around each other in stories about creation, sex, death and destruction. But can it be told in under nine hours? That was the duration of Peter Brooks’ famous 1988 production of The Mahabharata at the Adelaide Festival. Miriam Fernandes and Ravi Jain, from Canada’s Why Not Theatre, have wrestled the saga into a two-part, five-hour theatrical production which includes time for a shared meal. It's headlining Perth Festival.The hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen has recently had to cancel its Canberra and Adalaide tours due to poor ticket sales, despite the show doing well in Melbourne and Sydney. Before that news broke, we recorded a song with the musical's Australian star Beau Woodbridge.Stephen Sondheim's Follies is the story of a once-famous company of American showgirls who have a reunion in the 1970s, 30 years after they last performed. The themes of age and regret require the performers to dig deep into vulnerability, says Antoinette Halloran, who stars as Sally in a new production by Victorian Opera. She's joined by director Stuart Maunder.
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'I think the rock swallowed them up': Ian Michael takes on an Australian classic
When director and actor Ian Michael first saw the stage play of Picnic at Hanging Rock, adapted by playwright Tom Wright, it was as a theatre attendant. Now, he is directing it at the Opera House for the Sydney Theatre Company. The Noongar theatre-maker has forged an exciting career performing deeply personal stories alongside innovative productions. His production of the gothic story of the Victorian school girls who go missing on St Valentine's Day, interrogates a colonial nightmare and its fixture in the Australian imagination.In 1954, model Shirley Beiger shot and killed her boyfriend outside the ritzy Chequers nightclub in Sydney. The case was a media sensation, especially when Beiger got off without any charges. It has inspired the cabaret A Model Murder staged inside the Darlinghurst Court House, where the original trial took place. Performers Amber McMahon and Maverick Newman give us a taste of the court action, along with writer Sheridan Harbridge.In the hit Edinburgh Fringe show, Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Samuel Barnett is a stand-up comedian regaling us at breakneck speed about his unfulfilling love life and very hectic brain. When a new and dazzling man comes into his life, everything could change, except for his new partner's extremely inconvenient medical condition... but is everything as it seems? Sam and director Matthew Xia join Michael to unpack this charismatic character, written by Marcello Dos Santos.
Australia