The Hayes Theatre Co’s three Helpmann Awards have shone a spotlight on independent musical theatre companies. One of its gurus is Producer/ Writer and Director Neil Gooding. As well as producing The Hatpin, LoveBites and Thank You For Being A Friend, he is known as the writer of Back to the 80’s, the producer of big Pro-am productions in the suburbs and as an investor in more ‘arty’works. *David Spicer reports.
At the halfway mark of Elia Kazan: A Theatre Investigation at The Sandpit, St Kilda, director Peta Hanrahan shares her passion for ‘making it new’, Elia Kazan, and the theatrical masterworks of the 20th Century.
“Make it NEW!” they have been screaming at me since I started in this game 30 years ago – “Make It New!”
Has Hollywood become the out-of-town try-out for stage musicals? Screen to stage adaptations certainly dominated the Great White Way when Stage Whispers’ reviewer Peter Pinne spent a week in New York in May catching up on some of Broadway’s newest musicals.
Australia’s first professional production of Parade opens tonight in Melbourne – and Coral Drouyn looks at this highly acclaimed but seldom seen musical that The Collective, a new Melbourne theatre company, has chosen for its debut.
Sydney based Sport For Jove Theatre Company has announced its theatrical line-up for 2015.
Outdoor Sport
SFJ’s outdoor theatre season returns for its 6th year in December 2014 and January 2015 with two works - A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare and The Crucible by Arthur Miller.
Sydney Theatre Company's production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot featuring Luke Mullins, Philip Quast, Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving, directed by STC Artistic Director Andrew Upton, will tour to London’s Barbican as part of the International Beckett Season in 2015.
Young classical music singer Mark Vincent will make his musical theatre debut in the role of Billy in the new Australian production of Dirty Dancing, producer John Frost announced today (September 16, 2014). The leading roles of Johnny Castle and Baby will be announced in coming weeks.Dirty Dancing will play at the Sydney Lyric Theatre from 28 November this year, then Melbourne’s Princess Theatre from March and the Lyric Theatre, QPAC from May.
It doesn’t seem possible that 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company, truly our only National theatre company, or that Bell still heads the company that bears his name, though he has grown from leading man to elder statesmen. These days he has a co-Artistic Director in Peter Evans, but it is still Bell’s vision at the core of the company.
The collection of works that makes up Ralph Myers’ fifth and final season prioritises new Australian plays, alongside a renewed commitment to Indigenous-led theatre and inventive interpretations of the classics.
