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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.
This year, one of the greatest shows on earth has been the US presidential race. The theatrics employed to shift allegiances, manipulate audiences and inspire voters call into question the line between politics and performance. The influential social and cultural thinker Richard Sennett turns his mind to these and other topics in his book, The Performer: Art, Life, Politics.
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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 lives. The Monty Python member is now touring Australia with his show Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! He's also written a new book about the creation of his musical, Spamalot.
Also, as we, as a society, adjust to the ways in which artificial intelligence will affect our everyday lives, playwright José Rivera brings us a clever new play called Your Name Means Dream, and Opera Australia is celebrating the essential role of the opera chorus in a show called Chorus!
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Mina Morita is on a mission to inspire a new crop of Australian theatre directors and to open our stages to a wider range of audiences and artists. She's in Australia to lead a program called Staging the World, and she's directing the Australian premiere season of Yoga Play at the National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre.
Also, theatre maker Wang Chong's acclaimed one-man show Made in China 2.0 returns to Australia. We find out what's on his Top Shelf. And we explore the origins of Bollywood dance with Professor Pallabi Chakravorty, and Ashley Lobo, a choreographer of more than 20 Bollywood films and the director of A Passage to Bollywood at the OzAsia Festival.
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The very first Australian production of the smash-hit coming-of-age musical Dear Evan Hansen has just opened in Sydney. The Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including one for the show's book writer, Steven Levenson. Steven also wrote the screenplay for Tick, Tick… Boom! — a musical film inspired by the life of Jonathan Larson (Rent).
Also, Mary Coustas is the creator of the big-haired, outspoken Greek Australian Effie who first took on the world in a stage show called Wogs Out of Work in 1987. She recently revealed a new persona on stage: her own, in her one-woman show This Is Personal. Her new show as Effie, now on tour, is called Upyourselfness.
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In the 1980s a young jazz pianist named David Bates ran away with a cabaret band to the other side of the world. A chance encounter with the now-iconic Spiegeltent gave him an idea — if he bought this unloved structure it had the potential to breathe new life into cabaret and variety acts for the 21st century. Bates is the creator of the legendary La Clique, which has been thrilling audiences worldwide for over 20 years.
Also Harley Mann, founder of Na Djinang Circus, reveals the power of the circus to shape the way we see the world in In Place, and ABC reporter Emily Bissland swaps the newsroom for the stage — as a cast member in her town's production of Mary Poppins — to find out what makes community theatre so special.
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Step into a hidden vault where the secrets of professional magicians are kept under lock and key. Your guide, magician Nicholas J Johnson, reveals the mysteries of the WG Alma Conjuring Collection, exploring why we’re so captivated by illusions—even when we know it’s all a trick.
Also, we explore how Patrick White's suburban satire A Cheery Soul resonates in 2024, and what would the music of rule-breakers such as Cleopatra, Frida Kahlo and Cathy Freeman sound like?
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Do you remember your last day of high school? It's a key moment for many of us, as we step out of our teenage lives and into the world of adulthood. Matthew Whittet's play Seventeen explores this transition in a unique way that has transfixed audiences around the globe.
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Roz Hervey has enjoyed a 30-plus-year career as a dancer, choreographer, director and producer. So, how does she respond when life throws her a challenge which will certainly bring those adventures to a halt? In the face of a recent diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), Roz has continue throwing all of her energies into the arts.
Also, we ask the multi-award-winning English director and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, choreographer of a new ballet inspired by Oscar Wilde, which works of art most inspire him, and we celebrate 60 years of the Australian Ballet School with the school's new director Megan Connelly and one of the school's most famous graduates, Graeme Murphy.
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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 Shakespeare have been the subject of violent debate. This surprising history is examined in two recent books by James Shapiro: Shakespeare in a Divided America and The Playbook.
Also, Trent Dalton's Love Stories, based on conversations with strangers on a Brisbane street corner, comes to the stage at this year's Brisbane Festival, and we pay tribute to the Australian playwright Jack Hibberd (Dimboola; A Stretch of the Imagination) who has died at the age of 84.
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The American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks started writing plays on the advice of a very famous mentor: the celebrated writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin. Suzan-Lori won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog, a revival of which also won a Tony Award. It's now on stage in Australia for the first time.
Also, Marina Prior and Michael Cormick, two superstars of Australian musical theatre, hit the highway with their Centrestage tour, and while many artists are sounding alarm bells about artificial intelligence, choreographer Alisdair Macindoe is embracing it. In Plagiary, Macindoe hands the role of choreographer to an algorithm.
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Noni Hazlehurst is one of Australia's best-loved and most enduring performers. Loved by generations of children as a presenter on Play School, she leaves the world of teddy bears and storybooks far behind in the brutal play, Mother.
Almost ten years after originating the role of Christie in Daniel Keene's one-person play, Noni is reprising her award-winning performance at Arts Centre Melbourne.
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Our series began with comedy and it ends with tragedy. In this episode, we interpret the bitter ends met by some of Shakespeare's most famous characters and ask why tragedies still exercise such force over our imaginations.
Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays.
In our sixth and final episode, we're joined by Professor David McInnis who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts, and Peter Evans, artistic director of Bell Shakespeare.
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The work of William Shakespeare has helped to define — and problematise — notions of English identity. It has also had an impact on the English language itself.
Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays.
In our fifth episode, we look at the intersections of Shakespeare and nationalism. We're joined by Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts, Professor David McInnis who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, and Peter Evans, artistic director of Bell Shakespeare.
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While some critics believe that plays like Othello and The Merchant of Venice are inherently racist, others argue that they simply portray, perhaps even criticise, the racist attitudes of the time.
Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays.
In our fourth instalment, we interrogate Shakespeare's portrayal of race. We also explore the surprising racial dimensions of one of Shakespeare's final plays: The Tempest. We're joined by Wesley Enoch, a Quandamooka man and an award-winning playwright and theatre director, Professor David McInnis who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama the University of Melbourne, and Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts.
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William Shakespeare's plays feature witchcraft, murder, ghosts and bloody revenge. Are his displays of blood and gore simply meant to entertain us or do they have more to say about the human condition?
Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays.
In our third instalment, we enter Shakespeare's house of horror. We're joined by Professor David McInnis, who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts, and Peter Evans, artistic director of Bell Shakespeare.
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What does it mean to defy the conventions and test the boundaries of gender? These are questions posed by some of Shakespeare's most famous characters.
Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays.
In our second instalment, we place gender in the spotlight. We're joined by Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts, Professor David McInnis, who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne, and Peter Evans, artistic director of Bell Shakespeare.
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Wherefore, Shakespeare? is a new series that explores the dilemmas, conflicts, and controversies in Shakespeare's major plays. In our first instalment, we tackle Shakespeare's comedies. Are they funny? And if they are, how is our sense of humour different from what tickled the fancies of the Elizabethan audience?
We're joined by Peter Evans, artistic director of Bell Shakespeare, Professor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, an acclaimed actor and the head of the School of Performing Arts at Collarts, and Professor David McInnes who teaches Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne.
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Nicci Wilks is a sharp and very physical actor and circus performer who has collaborated with major figures in Australian theatre, including Patricia Cornelius, Angus Cerini and Susie Dee. Her new show traces the life of a rodeo clown. The surprisingly heart-wrenching one-person show, called Rodeo Clown, is at this year's Darwin Festival.
Also, having lost the support of their host university, the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) announces a new partnership with Collarts, Nadine Garner reads from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with two superstar classical musicians, and we meet a couple with no dance experience planning an elaborate duet for their wedding day.
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The Welsh playwright Gary Owen writes authentic portrayals of working people living tough lives with wit, passion and dignity. Right now, three of his plays are being staged in Australia. Romeo and Julie and Iphigenia in Splott are both at Red Stitch and his reworking of The Cherry Orchard is at the Old Fitz Theatre in Sydney.
Also, rising Australian playwright Benjamin Nichol delivers two blistering new one-person plays in a double bill at fortyfivedownstairs, Milk and Blood, and we meet John 'Divine G' Whitfield, the man whose story inspired Sing Sing, a new film about prisoners participating in the Rehabilitation Through the Arts theatre program at New York's Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
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The Australian playwright Ray Lawler has died at the age of 103. Lawler wrote Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, which spurred a growing movement of artists telling Australian stories in Australian voices on the mainstage. To pay tribute to Ray Lawler, we're joined by theatre legends Robyn Nevin and Neil Armfield and we hear interviews with Ray from the ABC archives.
Also, the musical Wicked will soon celebrate one year on stage in Australia. Ahead of their transfer to Brisbane, Sheridan Adams (Elphaba) and Courtney Monsma (Glinda) perform for us. And we meet two British actors who staged Hamlet in the ultra-violent and unpredictable video game world of Grand Theft Auto. A documentary about their efforts, Grand Theft Hamlet, is screening at this year's MIFF.
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