Lea Salonga — a trailblazing star of the stage

The acclaimed Irish actor Andrew Scott tackles his most challenging stage role yet in a one-man retelling of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The production, Vanya, was commissioned and directed by Sam Yates, a young British director who was mentored by the likes of Trevor Nunn, Nicholas Hytner and Phyllida Lloyd. 

Also, opening nights can be stressful under any circumstances, but what do you do when a zombie apocalypse threatens curtain time? We're joined by the team behind Zombie! The Musical. And an updated version of Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gaslight is now touring Australia. We meet the director and writers.

At the 2024 Adelaide Festival, we visit theatre foyers, dressing rooms and the city's famous gardens to meet the artists bringing theatregoers to the edge of their seats.

We speak with artistic director Ruth McKenzie, who is delivering her first full program this year, we meet acclaimed choreographer Elizabeth Streb, whose 'Action Hero' performers in Streb Extreme Action will push their bodies to the limit in Time Machine, we visit the Narungga artists and cultural custodians sharing the creation stories of their country on the Yorke Peninsula in Guuranda, and we learn how acts of creative thievery can become a joyful paean to the performing arts in Grand Theft Theatre.

One of the headline events at this year's Adelaide Festival is an enchanting production of Stravinsky's opera The Nightingale. It comes from the playful imagination of Robert Lepage. Lepage is an acclaimed French-Canadian writer, director and performer who, during his decades-long career, has reshaped our ideas of what theatre can be.

Also, we hear a scene from Monument by Emily Sheehan, a new Australian play at Red Stitch about a tense encounter between a woman prime minister and her makeup artist, and we learn about the family history that has inspired former ABC journalist Jane Hutcheon to tell her own story on stage in the show Lost in Shanghai.

British visual artist Es Devlin has designed spectacular sets for some of the largest stages on earth. As well as designing for the theatre, Es has created unique performance spaces for the likes of Beyoncé and U2. Now, her award-winning stage design for The Lehman Trilogy, about the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank, can be seen on stage in Sydney.

Also, Pip Williams' bestselling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words has been adapted for the stage, and 400 years after its publication, John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi is back. So, what is this violent and bloody play's appeal in 2024?

Live on stage at the 2024 Perth Festival, we encounter an opera, a play and a dance work that each explores how the places where we live shape who we are.

We're joined on stage by Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse, composers of the new Noongar-language opera Wundig wer Wilara, Dalisa Pigram, Soultari Amin Farid and Zee Zunnur, co-creators of Mutiara, a dance work that investigates the complex history of Broome's pearling industry, and playwright Steve Rodgers and director Kate Champion whose new play The Pool is performed in and around a suburban aquatic centre.

The last production to grace the stage of Griffin's historic SBW Stables Theatre before a major redevelopment will be The Lewis Trilogy from Australian playwright Louis Nowra. The three highly acclaimed plays — Summer of the Aliens, Così and This Much Is True — are all drawn from Nowra's own very eventful life.

Also, Jonathan Larson's hit musical RENT is back on stage in Australia, and ahead of two new productions of Candide in Melbourne and Adelaide, we take a closer look at Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta based on the Enlightenment-era novella by Voltaire.

In Jungle Book Reimagined, the celebrated choreographer Akram Khan brings Rudyard Kipling's classic and contested Jungle Book stories into a near-future world torn apart by the impacts of climate change. But with the original stories rooted in colonial perspectives, why revisit them a century later to tell a story of displacement amid environmental collapse?

Also, the role of Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring Cycle is one of opera's most demanding. It requires a dramatic soprano voice with extraordinary power and maturity and is rarely tackled until a singer is well into their career. To learn more, we're joined by our ABC Top 5 resident, mezzo soprano Katrina Waters, who is investigating the mid-career transitions of female dramatic voices.

Tim Minchin has written the music and lyrics for Groundhog Day the Musical, which is coming to Australia following runs on Broadway and the West End. 

In the 1993 film, Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman, Phil Connors, who finds himself living the same day over and over. But with each repeated day, Phil learns a little more about himself and the people around him. Who better to wrestle with these existential themes in musical form than the always philosophical Tim Minchin?

What happens when we see real events and meet well-known people on stage? How can the theatre shape our sense of our own history? Those questions are raised by a new Australian play called Sunday. It features a knockout performance from Nikki Shiels as the famous Australian arts patron Sunday Reed.

Also, Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage is renowned for her incisive, moving and witty plays about the intersections of race and class in America. The playwright joins us to reflect on her storied career and how her work taps into larger political conversations. This year, the Sydney Theatre Company will stage her play Sweat.

Joanna Murray-Smith is an acclaimed Australian playwright and one of the few to have enjoyed success on Broadway and the West End. She joins us to reflect on her storied career and recent work.

Also, Stephen Schwartz thought that he had left Broadway behind when he had a chance encounter with a novel called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Wicked became his most successful show and it is now back on stage in Australia.