The Stage Show
Maelezo ya Kituo
The Stage Show
In-depth conversations with the world's top directors, performers and writers for the stage.
Vipindi vya Hivi Karibuni
252 vipindi
Why Eddie Perfect wrote a musical for his alma mater
The new musical Tivoli Lovely is Eddie Perfect’s return to the grand days of what was known across Australia as the Tivoli Theatre circuit. He's writt...
Broadway star Bernadette Peters + reviving The Shiralee
Bernadette Peters is the Tony award winning actress who has reigned on Broadway for decades. She is famous for originating roles in Stephen Sondheim m...
Shining a new light on 'Rebecca', a gothic tale of infatuation
Rebecca is a 1938 gothic suspense story by Daphne Du Maurier that's never been out of print. It's also a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock. Now it's a...
A Filipino-Australian story in the shadow of a revolution
In 1986, Filipinos launched a peaceful revolution to overthrow their president, Ferdinand Marcos. In the new play Malacañang Made Us, these events liv...
Suzie Miller's new play 'Inter Alia' delves into uncomfortable truths
The Stage Show is back from sabbatical! On this episode, star playwright Suzie Miller speaks to Michael about Inter Alia, her gripping new play that t...
Jazz Legends: Keith Jarrett
Pianist Keith Jarrett is one of the most captivating and controversial musicians of the last 50 years. He's a rare breed - a musician who has mastered...
Jazz Legends: Charles Mingus
Much like Duke Ellington before him, Charles Mingus' output was prolific. Over his near four-decade career, Mingus was behind a number of jazz firsts:...
Jazz Legends: Billie Holiday
This week we're honouring the late, great Billie Holiday. From her early ascendancy as a weaver of song in the 30s to her outspoken truth telling with...
Jazz Legends: Quincy Jones
If you were to put together a list of jazz’s most influential names, then it’d be hard to look past Quincy Jones’s contributions. He was a giant of th...
Jazz Legends: Joni Mitchell
In the '70s, Joni Mitchell looked to jazz to inform her creative style. She would collaborate with many of the genre's leaders, but as we'll discover,...
Jazz Legends: Sonny Rollins
With over 70 years of playing jazz under his belt, Sonny Rollins has seen a thing or two. He was present at so many turning points in the music: from...
Jazz Legends: Nina Simone
The name Nina Simone can mean many things to many people. Casual fans of her music will no doubt remember her hits like 'I Loves You Porgy', or 'My Ba...
Stephen Sondheim — taking a razor to conventions (Part II)
We continue our journey into the life and work of Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever m...
Stephen Sondheim — taking a razor to conventions (Part I)
Stephen Sondheim is the composer and lyricist of some of the most well-regarded musical theatre ever made. We delve into his life, work and impact on...
Dancing with life and death + the spooky joy of Beetlejuice
Choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer Robin Fox are partners in work and life, though they come from 'different worlds' artistically. Their lates...
Pamela Rabe tackles an iconic role + a kid's point of view on stage
It’s one of those roles which great actors have on their to-do list: Winnie in the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. Winnie starts the play buried u...
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...
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...
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,...
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 s...
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-chang...
100 years of La Boite: a little theatre with big ambitions
We mark the 100th Birthday of Australia's oldest continuously run theatre — Brisbane's iconic La Boite. A little theatre that's had a huge influence o...
'We're very scared when we're on stage': comedy sisters Flo & Joan
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has taken over the city. Comedians from across Australia and around the world are here including the UK's...
In 'Lazarus', a playwright resurrects a living legend
John Harding, a founder of Ilbijerri Theatre Company and veteran playwright, recorded 20 hours of Taungurung elder Uncle Larry Walsh recounting his li...
Ruby Wax dives deep (with whales) in her comedy + Eliza Scanlen on Oscar Wilde
Comedian and writer Ruby Wax tells Michael about how she recently found herself in a mental health clinic, after searching for transformative experien...
How Anaïs Mitchell wrote the hit musical Hadestown
This episode of The Stage Show is about love that doesn't end well!
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold in a hit folk musical called Hade...
The story that brought Leah Purcell back to the stage
Actor, director and writer Leah Purcell has been telling us her own stories and the stories of people close to her since the 1990s. Now Leah’s back –...
Actor Stephen Rea in Krapp's Last Tape + the soul of Butoh
We meet Irish screen and theatre actor Stephen Rea, who talks about meeting Samuel Beckett early in his career. Rea so wanted to perform Beckett's pla...
Turning the late Ryuichi Sakamoto into mixed reality
Shortly before he died, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performed a piano concert called Kagami – which was filmed and recorded with mixed reality...
Dancing in the street with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
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...
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 t...
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 He...
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, dea...
'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 attendan...
The surprising history of Shakespeare in a divided America
Over the past 200 years, theatre has often been a lightning rod for social and political upheaval in the United States. Even the plays of William Shak...
Why Eric Idle always looks on the bright side of life
Death is not a very funny subject. Yet, comedian, writer and musician Eric Idle has spent 60 years showing us the funny side of our all-too-fleeting l...
The story of the groundbreaking Warumpi Band
In the desert town of Papunya in 1981, four blackfellas and a whitefella bonded over rock 'n' roll and became the history-making Warumpi Band. The War...
Giacomo Puccini 100 years on
It's been 100 years since the death of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini. From La Bohème to Turandot, Puccini's operas remain some of the mos...
'I know what I'm doing' — Why Miriam Margolyes courts controversy
In her memoir Oh Miriam!, the British-Australian actress, writer and comedian Miriam Margolyes shares hugely entertaining stories from her life with h...