Tom Holloway’s award-winning script, Red Sky Morning, is a powerful and poetic story about family, silence, and finding hope in the everyday and is the latest offering presented by Theatre Works as a part of their 2026 By Theatre Works programming. For director Lyall...

This April, acclaimed theatre-maker Megan Jones, Theatre Works, and Machination Theatre Ensemble bring an emotionally resonant new work to the Theatre Works stage. An inventive reimagining of the Cinderella story, told from the perspective of the stepmother, here we...

After a sold out season at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Best Comedy Winner, BIRDS, returns for a two-week run at the Malthouse for Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Shayna (Hines), a wealthy five-time divorcee, and Beverley (Stafford), a mother of twelve...

  Rob Mills first saw Waitress The Musical within a month of its debut on Broadway and was immediately in love. A few years later he was in London and saw the musical again in the West End. His dream was to play the role of Dr Pomatter in Waitress in London's...

Jayne Steer lost her mum, her fiancé and her mind – in that order, all two weeks before her nine-night Melbourne International Comedy Festival debut. After a psychotic episode on her 35th birthday led to a cPTSD diagnosis, Jayne decided to escape to a luxury treatment...

Critically acclaimed comedian and historian Paul Coulter brings his three-time Edinburgh Fringe sell-out show to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the first time. Read on for Paul's take on his show, his audience and what comes next. How would you...

World Theatre Day Message 2026 by Willem DAFOE   March 27th is World Theatre Day! For more information about World Theatre Day click here:   This year's message is by Willem Dafoe:   I am an actor principally know as a film actor. But my roots are...

In 2020, George Rigden was roundly (and rightly) cancelled, and his life fell apart. In 2025, he was finally diagnosed with autism, finally sobered up – and began to put his life back together. Now, more than half a decade on from his life falling apart, he’s finally...

After a 23-year hiatus, double cancer survivor and previous Moosehead Award Recipient Katrina Mathers (The Wedge, Flipside, Footy Chicks) now returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Mathers had every intention of doing more shows from there, but, she...

How would you describe your show to someone who knows very little about it? Maitriarchy is all about Fifty, Frisky & Family Roadtrippin’—Laughs, Luggage, and a Little Lack of Lingerie is an hour of stand-up comedy. I will take you on a round-the-world tour of...

After smash hit sell-out runs in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, the award-winning festival favourite Murder Village: An Improvised Whodunnit returns to Arts Centre Melbourne for the 2026 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. A unique experience wherein no...

A fabulous and irreverent hour from one of the Queens of Malaysian comedy!  Funny, single and in her 40s, Shamaine dives into stories of modern womanhood, cultural confusion and being raised by liberal Muslim parents. All while owning her nepo baby status as the...

I've come to Australia, STRAYA. Melbourne baaaaby. All the way from Yorkshire in the UK. You know, the place with the puddings. I've got stories to tell from my travels about cage fighting Swedish people. Working in a strip clubs. And how I ended up living under a...

As seen on The Bachelor, Steph Crothers is stepping out of the reality TV closet and onto the Melbourne Comedy Festival stage with her debut solo hour, Daddy Daycare – a bold, risqué clowning show that uses nostalgia and satire to shine a light on male entitlement....

  The Diary of Anne Frank is a stage adaptation of the journal kept by young teenager Anne Frank as she hid in exile in Amsterdam from the Nazi occupation during WWII. The diary was a gift for her 13th birthday and Anne started her diary in 1942, initially...

Beyond The Neck, by multi award-winning playwright Tom Holloway, is a compelling work based on real accounts from people affected by the horror of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 during Australia's deadliest mass shooting...

Sold out in 2025! Dr Hubble, Australia's Favourite Bubbleman is back with more of his Brilliant Bubbles. Dr Hubble manipulates simple soap bubbles to create miraculous moments of wonder. You will see bubbles you have never seen before, the square bubble, the octagon...

Trailblazing gay UK comedian James Barr makes his Melbourne debut with a bold, "genre-defying" (ArtsHub) hour of stand-up. A darkly hilarious reckoning with shame, survival and a pushy-wushy down the stairsy-wairsy. Read on to get James' take on his show, his audience...

Avant-garde, post-punk, death oompah band and cult cabaret geniuses The Tiger Lillies make their long-awaited return to Australia with Serenade from the Sewer, celebrating the weird, the macabre and those that society has abandoned. The group laid foundation in 1989...

S. Asher Gelman's international hit play, Afterglow, is heading to Melbourne for its highly anticipated Australian premiere at Midsumma later this month. The plot, essentially about a gay married couple in an open relationship, is one extremely close to the heart of...

By Nick Pilgrim  I am a graphic designer and a photographer by trade. Beyond my nine-to-five juggling act, competitive ice skating and live theatre are my two biggest after-hours passions. Late last year, I applied for and earned press passes to the 2026 European...

Ambition collides with desire in playwright Angus Cameron's razor-sharp queer comedy, Australian Open. Described as a heady blend of queer comedy, sports theatre, and psychological drama, actor Jane Montgomery Griffiths says it’s just a terrific script "Funny, sparky,...

The Australian Shakespeare Company is excited to soon set Melbourne’s summer nights alive with Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and mischievous comedies. Seasoned writer, director and actor, Peter Houghton, plays the disagreeable but multi-layered...

With the city’s Botanic Gardens as a stunning backdrop, audiences will be treated to some of Shakespeare’s most chaotic characters unleashed under the stars with the Australian Shakespeare Company's fabulously mad Peter Quince presents Shakespeare’s Best Bits. From...

A single mum, a teenage daughter, and a new life in a regional town where neither quite fits. Billie is 16 and restless, trying to navigate the chaos of adolescence. Mum, meanwhile, is spinning into a rebellion of her own – in the sweaty, rough and radical world of...

  John Foreman's Australian Pops Orchestra have added some new events this holiday season.  In addition to the traditional New Year's Eve and The Day Before Gala Concerts, there are three other events.   It all kicks off with The Great Christmas Singalong...

Bad Hand is a cabaret debut for theatre and screen star Natalie Abbott (Muriel's Wedding the Musical, Aftertaste ABC) centred on navigating life’s unpredictability, grief and getting out of bed anyways. After the kind of loss that flips the script entirely, Abbott...

Taking over the Sydney Opera House with an 18-piece orchestra in his flashiest, funniest and most fearless endeavour yet, Reuben Kaye is bigger and better than ever (it’s in the title). We know because he made us write it down.  The fiery, filthy and fabulous comedian...

After someone threw a burger at them and shouted a transphobic slur, performance artist Travis Alabanza became obsessed with burgers. How they are made, how they feel, and smell. How they travel through the air. How the mayonnaise feels on your skin. This hilarious...

 In Ireland, a wake is no ordinary farewell. It's a ritual of release where music, stories, and laughter spill through the night into the dawn as community gathers to honour endings and embrace new beginnings.     WAKE takes that spirit and transforms it into a...

In a few short weeks, the world’s best cirque performers will descend on Sydney as they prepare to star in the Sydney premiere of Cirque Alice, opening at Coliseum Theatre on 24 December. Globally acclaimed comedy magician Paul Dabek (Cirque Du Soleil, The...

Ahead of Gasworks' 40th birthday in 2026, new Creative Director and CEO Sam Strong has unveiled a fresh vision for the creative precinct as a home for creativity. Strong says  what attracted him most about Gasworks was its uniqueness and its potential. "There really...

New York cabaret trailblazer Salty Brine delivers the latest chapter in his collage-cabaret cult-hit Living Record Collection at the Sydney Festival with a bravura mash-up of high drama, indie rock and memoir.     Bigmouth Strikes Again is a fever-dream fusion of The...

By Jennifer Beasley. FortyFive Downstairs goes for BIGGER, BOLDER and EXCITING in their 2026 Season Launch.  Twenty-four years. Twenty-four years that FortyFive Downstairs has uplifted Melbourne audiences with their eclectic presentations. Plays, opera, chamber music...

By Jennifer Beasley. Mystical, Magical, Marvellous Melbourne will captivate audiences and the public once again with a stellar line-up of entertainment, lights, and decorations to herald the arrival of the Big S this Christmas. This is going to be one jolly Ho, Ho, Ho...

By Jennifer Beasley. Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre rocks the stage at the MEMO MUSIC HALL to unveil its boldest vision in its 25-year history. Let’s hear it for the quarter of a century of blood, sweat and plenty of timber as Red Stitch launches its 2026 season,...

    Glenn Elston OAM is the Artistic Director of the Australian Shakespeare Company, a company which has grown from a group of 12 in 1987 to the largest independent theatre company in Australia. Elston has produced, directed and written a vast array of...

Premiering at the Explosives Factory in St Kilda, this November Melbourne audiences are invited to a science fiction pirate horror comedy like no other. Brought to the stage by renowned actor David Tredinnick and writer Adam Browne, this new Australian work promises a...

By Jennifer Beasley It’s bold, it’s delicious, it’s Malthouse Theatre’s 2026 Season Launch! There’s nothing better than going to a theatrical season launch, and Malthouse blazes away with nine, I repeat, NINE stellar productions for 2026. That’s two up on the 2025...

An Aussie living in New York, chasing a Broadway dream, sounds like a recipe for success, or disaster, or absolute Melbourne Fringe Festival gold. This October, the emotional snack Chip On Her Shoulder, starring Vanessa Buckley (Doctor Doctor, La Brea, Home and Away)...

Coming to Footscray Community Arts next month is the world premiere season of I Met An Angel Named Jacques. It is the latest work by renowned multidisciplinary artist Gideon D. Wilonja and explore how love, ambition, and ego collide, especially in queer Black lives...

  On Saturday 13th September the Victorian State Schools Spectacular (VSSS) will celebrate its 30th birthday with two performances at John Cain Arena. Simon K Patterson is the Creative Producer of the Victorian State Schools Spectacular. While Saturday will be a...

jks: a comedy(?) is a new play by comedian Tom Ballard that delves into the world of comedy and what it means to be funny. Long listed for the 2025 Griffin Playwriting Award, the production will feature a brilliant cast of comedic actors, including Ballard himself,...

UK theatre collective SUBJECT OBJECT makes its Melbourne debut with a bold double-bill of celebrated work at Melbourne Fringe Festival in October. Fascinatingly, work.txt reimagines theatre by eliminating the cast entirely – the audience performs the play for...

More piercing than 1984 and Brave New World combined, The Machine Stops is the chilling tale of a futuristic information-oriented society where all of humanity survives in a subterranean world. The Machine Stops is a masterful new adaptation of the novella by E.M....

The gripping fast-paced comedy thriller, The 39 Steps, is set to tour Australia from this month. Mixing Alfred Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller with a dash of Monty Python-style chaos, the play is sure to excite the laughing gear. Directed by acclaimed theatre-maker...

Irene Korsten’s latest work, Are You There?, literally came about one day at work, at the front desk. The play features an array of true stories from Korsten's time working in Aged Care "I was fielding emails, spreadsheets, the office phone, my mobile phone - it was...

Directed and written by Alaine Beek and Berne-Lee (Nana) Edwards, Essence Theatre Productions and Ngā Mātai Pūrua Inc (a Wyndham based Māori non-profit organisation). (NMP) is set to bring audiences a gripping new work inspired by events at Port Phillip Prison, now...

After a highly successful international 90-show tour spanning New Zealand and Australia of a double Shakespeare bill of Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, The Barden Party, known for their bold musical reimagining of Shakespeare, will tour their audacious interpretation...

Dial M For Murder, Frederick Knott's classic 1952 edge-of-your-seat thriller, launches its highly anticipated arrival at Theatre Works next month. Possibly best known as the 1954 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (screenplay by Knott), Smoke and Mirrors Productions of...

  The Australian Premiere production of Beetlejuice The Musical is now playing at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne's East End Theatre District, with the final performance on Thursday 11th of September!  Tickets available at: www.beetlejuicethemusical.com.au  ...

Oscar Wilde's most well known society play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is soon to grace The Motley Bauhaus stage, but, in the hands of the production company Misfit Toys, this new adaptation is not what one might expect. Presented by an all-female/femme...

Bare Witness Theatre Company's latest offering, Smokescreen, is described as a razor-sharp power play about the dark arts of marketing behind climate denial. For writer and director, Christopher Samuel Carroll, this horrifying insight into the impact of covert...

Karlis Zaid's show, Loving the Alien, will have its world premiere at Arts Centre Melbourne this July. A love letter to David Bowie, this original theatre piece features songs and storytelling with Zaid and entertainer, writer and director, Aurora Kurth, in the lead...

Helen Garner's harrowing but loving story, The Spare Room, is set to open at Belvoir Theatre tomorrow. Adapted for the stage by its director Eamon Flack, The Spare Room is set over the course of three weeks while the narrator, Helen, cares for a friend dying of bowel...

Soldier Boy is the story of the youngest Australian known to have died in World War I. James Charles Martin was only 14 years and nine months old when he succumbed to typhoid (after serving for only seven weeks) during the Gallipoli campaign. He was one of 20...

With its rapidly shifting scenes and characters, Love and Information by Caryl Churchill, explores contemporary human connection and communication in a society saturated with information. For actor Emma Woods the biggest takeaway from Churchill's insightful piece is...

  Rachelle Ann Go was always destined to be a singer. Her parents told her she was humming along to a song on the radio at just eight months old. Inspired, her father taught her to sing and play musical instruments. At the age of six her father would put her on...

Multi-award-winning writer and performer Katie Reddin-Clancy presents a dark comedy about an eccentric cabaret performer’s soul review. How would you describe your show to someone who knows very little about it? It’s a solo show about a cabaret performers soul review!...

 Uma Dobia is your game show host for the evening as we spin the wheel, shake our maracas and ding our dong. Spotify playlists collide in Popera with questions such as "Why did Trevor leave? What’s cockrockera? And, who will win the air fryer?". How would you describe...

Check out the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar performing for Melbourne's media at the Princess Theatre!   The iconic global phenomenon, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, is now playing, with a mesmerising new production that has received unprecedented acclaim and accolades...

Direct from Cripple Creek, Colorado, country music legend Wilson Dixon returns to Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the first time in years. Known to many as the greatest country singer Cripple Creek has ever produced – as well as the only country singer...

Love, history and identity will collide on stage when Joanna Murray-Smith’s spine-tingling romantic thriller, Berlin, returns to Melbourne following its sell-out run in 2023. Actor Lachlan Hamill describes watching Berlin at MTC in 2021 as the most incredible piece of...

. Forbidden temptation... throbbing manhoods... thrusting surrender... Since thumbing the pages of naughty books at the local library as a kid, Hayley Sproull has been tickled by the world of erotica. Nominated for Best Show at the 2024 NZ International Comedy...

Ray O’Leary (Taskmaster, Have You Been Paying Attention?) pulled a man from a wrecked car and as the man lay dying, he used his last ounce of strength to ask Ray (Nominee 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award for Most Outstanding Show) to tell his...

This March, Theatre Works celebrates one of Anton Chekhov’s most celebrated plays. First performed in 1901, Three Sisters takes place over three and a half years and follows the lives of four siblings after the death of their father. Theatre Works now offers a...

Mining everything from racism to relationships, religion to class has seen Anisa Nandaula amass more than 50 million views of her work across Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube and more than 200,000 social media followers. In her captivating comedy special,  Nandaula...

In Fire Drill Scenario, South Korean choreographer and artist Geumhyung Jeong investigates the excitement, and real-life risks that artists and audiences take when partaking in live performance experiences. Expect the unexpected in this wry, somehow ridiculous but...

Terrapin in association with Aichi Prefectural Art Theater, bring their dynamic and wondrous show, Goldfish, to the stage later this month. The show is aimed at children aged 8+ and their families and is a place where reality and fantasy collide.  A fascinating...

Night Night, the latest work by iconic Australian theatre makers The Last Great Hunt, is fascinatingly described as a story of life, death and other dimensions. The work began as an online collaboration between The Last Great Hunt’s Arielle Gray and Tim Watts with...

Written, directed and starring Joe Paradise Lui and Merlynn Tong, Legends (Of The Golden Arches) is a rip-roaring ride plunging two best friends into the depths of the Chinese afterlife.  A piece many years in the making, the show premieres its 2025 season shortly,...

Shadows in Twin Cities brings together children from Jeonju (Korea) and Melbourne (Australia) in unusual conversations between each other and their city landscapes. The children meet and connect via life-sized screens. It's unusual and candid one-on-one exchange...

Melbourne’s beloved family classic, The Wind in the Willows, returns to the Royal Botanic Gardens this summer. Presented by The Australian Shakespeare Company, The Wind in the Willows celebrates its 38th year of outdoor theatre family entertainment. Actor Alyssa...

  As a child growing up in Britain, Emma Rice would go on family walks, stumbling over the moors in the cold and rainy weather to a place called Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse near Haworth, West Yorkshire, England, which is said to have been the inspiration for...

  Keanu Gonzalez has been wowing audiences in the Australian tour of Grease The Musical playing the iconic role of Kenickie. But before Grease heads north to open in Brisbane early in the new year, Keanu Gonzalez is relishing the opportunity to create a brand new...

By Jennifer Beasley. Look out 2025- Red Stitch Theatre heralds 5 bold new plays! I was very keen to be part of this 2025 season launch by Red Stitch Theatre. As one of the smaller theatres, it has consistently produced high quality productions over its 24-year...

By Sarah Skubala Eurovision on Tour has arrived in Australia and has opened with a 3-hour epic concert in Brisbane. This will be followed by stops in Melbourne on 15 November and Sydney on 17 November. The tour features 18 Eurovision legends, including three past...

Summer and Autumn are in love, but there’s a problem in their love nest. While Summer plans a spectacular skating party, Autumn roams the house, spanner in hand, looking for a drip she can’t see. With cracks emerging in their relationship, puddles appear on the floor...

 Matthew Lopez’s blockbuster play, The Inheritance, premieres in Sydney at the Seymour Centre from 7 – 30 November following hit seasons on the West End and Broadway which took home four Tony and four Olivier Awards including Best Play. This two-part, seven-hour epic...

By Sarah Skubala Off the back of their sell-out season of Coco Chanel: the Life of a Fashion Icon, Queensland Ballet will be presenting their sister company Shanghai Ballet’s production of Derek Deane’s The Lady of the Camellias, following a short return season of...

  In what has quickly become a Melbourne festive season tradition, the blockbuster production, A Christmas Carol, returns for a third year this Christmas. Dickens' classic, heart-warming tale tells the story of miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas...

Co-directed by long time collaborators Sharmini Kumar (24 carrot productions) and DL Turnbull (Dad Jeans/Early Days), William Shakespeare's Macbeth is reimagined as a tense, intimate two hander featuring western theatre's most famous couple - The Macbeths. An idea,...

Fresh from a rapturously received Sydney season, MARVELous The Show showcases well known and loved superheroes including Thor, Black Widow, Deadpool, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Iron Man and more as they’ve never been seen before, in outrageous and unexpected...

By Jennifer Beasley Malthouse has announced its 2025 season, with seven bold interpretations and visionary theatre performances, it’s Malthouse’s most audacious season yet.  At the season launch for 2025, Matthew Lutten, artistic director and Co-CEO of Malthouse...

By Sarah Skubala An immersive experience precinct has arrived in South Bank, offering the adventurous people of BrisVegas a new destination to be spellbound by multi-sensory thrills. After successful runs at previous Brisbane Festival seasons, the hit Japanese magic...

Travel through space and time on a journey of discovery and connection with the inspiring Melbourne premiere season of Ada, Asmin and The Analytical Engine. Co-written and co-directed by Sarah Kriegler and made in collaboration with math teacher and Turkish refugee,...

Melt Festival is an annual open access festival of Queer art and culture premiering in Brisbane from 23 October to 10 November 2024 and featuring over 220 performances and events. One of those performances is TINA – A Tropical Love Story written, performed, and...

  When Quasimodo the Musical opens in Melbourne's Capitol Theatre this weekend it will be the world premiere of a musical that has been decades in the making for its writer, Samuel Kristy.   As Samuel Kristy discovered, getting a new work produced in...

WildThingProduction and the Seymour Centre are bringing the hilarious and nostalgic Australian play Seventeen back for a much-anticipated Sydney revival, showing at the Reginald Theatre from 27 September – 19 October. Joyful and profound, Matthew Whittet’s Seventeen...

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II are, without doubt, one of the greatest partnerships in the history of musical theatre. Rodgers and Hammerstein redefined the genre with their much-loved and ground-breaking classics such as Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King...

 Hot on the heels of its sell-out run in Brisbane and Melbourne, Cirque Bon Bon’s all-star cast of contortionists, acrobats and dancers is set to embark on an Australian tour later this month. The brainchild of former Cirque Du Soleil Assistant Creative Director Ash...

To celebrate the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris we've compiled a list of  The Top Ten Olympic Inspired Musicals   10. Billy Elliot The Musical While boxing is an official sport of the summer Olympics, this one is a shout-out to all the kids who chose dancing over...

 In a series of surreal comedic encounters, a French actress is fired for her bad behaviour, two tourists find themselves disappointed by the city of Paris and a French translator attempts to navigate the complex relationship with her mother and her mother tongue....

A Brittany Higgins inspired play by award winning playwright Sally Faraday premieres In Melbourne on July 4 at Theatreworks. In The Long Game, sisterhood, sexual assault and political power explode on stage as we follow the story of one of Australia’s key political...

Art and science converge at the world premiere of Superluminal, a family-friendly interactive installation from award-winning Patch Theatre that will spark wonder in the enquiring minds of children aged 4 to 8 at the South Australian Museum for Illuminate Adelaide. A...

RIVERSIDE THEATRES PRESENTS THE COMEDY EVENT OF THE YEAR, ARE YOU PULLING MY LEG? Boasting a line-up of award-winning performers including Madeleine Stewart. Read on to find out more about Stewart and her show.  How would you describe Are You Pulling My Leg to someone...

Gabrielle Leah New's latest work,  , poses the question, if older women were recognised for their strength, beauty, and power, could humanity move in a more positive direction? A stirring point to ponder and one that New visited when she was turning 50. "I had a...

 Accessible Arts and Crips & Creeps in Association with Arts on Tour and Riverside are thrilled to present, Are You Pulling My Leg?, a raucous, accessible comedy event showcasing some of Australia’s funniest comedians with disability or chronic illness, at...

Following successful seasons in Edinburgh, London and New York, Zinnie Harris’ acclaimed play Macbeth (An Undoing) will make its Australian premiere at Malthouse Theatre on Friday 5 July. This revised and updated edition is a powerful reimagining of Shakespeare's...