News

Nurturing Home Grown from the Roots

Nick Hedger and Ben Nicholson, young entrepreneurs and composers, launch a new initiative, Grassroots, and Coral Drouyn is excited.

M is for Marvellous - and Megan

Imagine making your stage debut on Broadway in the hottest musical in town. It’s just one of the reasons why Coral Drouyn enjoyed chatting to Smash star Megan Hilty before she headed down under.

Megan Hilty is beautiful, super talented and has a voice to die for. She’s also open and friendly, easy to talk to and laughs a lot. Life is good, and she’s holidaying at Disneyland with husband, Brian, and 18-month-old daughter Viola, before making her trip to Australia for a concert tour.

Entire STC Cast Broadway Bound in The Present

Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh will be joined by the entire original cast of The Present when Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s first play opens on Broadway. Full casting was announced overnight in the US as tickets go on sale for the limited season, commencing previews at the Barrymore Theatre on 17 December 2016, opening on 8 January and closing on 19 March 2017.

Adelaide Festival Centre’s Walk of Fame

Adelaide Festival Centre’s Walk of Fame is one step closer to realisation, with the public and critics’ star recipients being announced today (May 30, 2016). The star-studded walkway will celebrate the creative artists whose work has graced the stages of the Adelaide Festival Centre and is a key part of the Riverbank precinct redevelopment project.

Anthony Warlow Wins Helen Hayes Award

At a ceremony in Washington DC this week, it was announced that Anthony Warlow has been awarded the prestigious 2016 Helen Hayes Award for Lead Actor in a Musical for his performance in Man of La Mancha for the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Creating New Songs for Our World

Coral Drouyn talks to the creatives of Songs for A New World which opens at Chapel off Chapel on June 2nd for a limited season.

Sweet Poison for Blonde Belinda

Coral Drouyn interviews Belinda Giblin.

Belinda Giblin became a household name more than 30 years ago when she graced our small screens in a number of soaps - most notoriously as the re-invented Pat The Rat in Sons and Daughters, supposedly after plastic surgery to make her unrecognisable (yes folks, people believed the most outrageous things before the internet). She’d already made four films while still in her twenties, and was a hit in an earlier “SOAP” The Box. For a while she was a sellable commodity… a “star.”

The Folly of Sondheim

Tyran Parke, director of the very special event Follies in Concert, talks to Coral Drouyn about being a Music Theatre Nerd and lover of all things Sondheim.

There are the fans who worship musicals, who find their escape from life sitting in the darkened auditorium and watching the story and the music unfold on the stage. Then there are those who are ON the stage, telling the stories, and those behind the stage, guiding the storytellers and, inevitably, storytellers themselves.

Carmen Returns to Sydney Harbour in 2017

Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour returns in 2017 with one of the most well-known and loved operas of all time, Bizet’s Carmen.

Take a harbour side setting with an unrivalled view of the famous Sydney skyline. Build a pop-up opera house, complete with bars, restaurants and tiered seating. Add a monumental set, colourful, eye-catching costumes, spectacular dance and an explosion of fireworks, and you’ve got a night like no other.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Theatre companies are amongst the 62 organisations to be defunded by The Australia Council in latest four year key organisation funding round.

The Red Stitch Theatre Company in Melbourne, the Lismore based NORPA and Adelaide’s Slingsby theatre company were unsuccessful in their grant bids.

All three companies have produced critically acclaimed new Australian work in recent years.

Stage Whispers' Peter Pinne described NORPA’s Railway Wonderland as the best site specific theatre he had ever seen. Picture, above, by Grant MacIntyre.

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