Culture

I pick up the drink when it arrives and I don’t say thank you. There’s something about this guy I don’t like. Maybe it’s his aftershave, or because I think I can hear him breathing through his nose. Whatever it is, I find it irritating. I look over the bar into the pool room where two dickheads in their football colours are chalking their cues. He’s still there at my elbow saying nothing.

For Stephen Nicolazzo, founder of Little Ones Theatre and now artistic director of Brink Productions, Madonna is the reason he makes theatre.

Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of Pip Williams’ best-selling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words is loyal to the book but weighed down by exposition.

Both honouring and expanding its legacy, the 40th Liveworks brought the ghosts of past performance to startling life.

After the shock of the failed referendum, Adelaide’s Tarnanthi 2023 – the biggest display of Aboriginal storytelling in the country – is a counterstrike that repays hatred with love.

Hmong–Australian writer Michele Lee’s new play, which explores death, ghosts and memory, began with a regular phone call to her parents.