Sunday Arts Magazine

Paul Horwell, Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Pride Centre, joins us to discuss the Centre’s GiveOUT Day Regional Outreach campaign. The initiative aims to expand the Pride Centre’s presence at regional Victorian pride events, helping connect LGBTIQA+ communities across the state with support, services and community networks.

GiveOUT Day for the VPC

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Hosts Neil and David take a look at A Man from the Future, the new Pet Shop Boys concept album created with Alan Turing biographer Andrew Hodges. Released on 9 October 2026, the album explores key chapters in the life and legacy of pioneering mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing, including his work breaking German Enigma codes during World War II, his role in the development of modern computing, and his prosecution for a homosexual relationship.

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Writer and performer Katrina Mathers joins us to discuss Anything But The Dyson and Other Excellent Monologues at Melbourne Fringe. Returning after its Melbourne International Comedy Festival season, the show blends autobiographical storytelling, character performance and comedy in a highly personal exploration of womanhood, ageing and midlife. The production runs at The Motley Bauhaus from 12-18 October.

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Actors Jovanna Hepburn and Seon Williams join us to talk about Timon of Athens, presented by Th’ Unguarded Duncan and Theatre Works. Written by William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, this rarely performed work examines wealth, generosity and human relationships through a darkly satirical lens. The production runs at Theatre Works, St Kilda, from 28 October to 7 November.

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Sarah-Louise Young joins us to discuss An Evening Without Kate Bush, the acclaimed cult cabaret returning to Fairfax Studio at Arts Centre Melbourne from 13-18 October. Celebrating the music, mythology and devoted fan community surrounding Kate Bush, the show invites audiences to immerse themselves in a joyful theatrical experience featuring beloved songs and stories that have captivated audiences around the world.

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Artist and photographer Brent Lukey talks about Stills From Unmade Films, his exhibition at Dawn and Mable wine bar on Acland St in St Kilda. He reflects on the cinematic sensibility behind the images and the atmosphere of presenting work in a neighbourhood space.

The post Brent Lukey – October 4th, 2026 appeared first on Sunday Arts Magazine.

Comedy and cabaret icons Tina Del Twist and Ethel Chop present Cant Come Around Today at Grouse room 7 on Smith St in Fitzroy as part of Melbourne Fringe. Running from 10 to 18 October, they discuss the show’s blend of character comedy, musical wit and the joy of performing together in a beloved local venue.

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Jonathan (Jonni) Homsey shares insights into 40 LOVE, an improvised dance performance set to the 2025 Australian Open women’s final. Presented at Dancehouse in Carlton North for the Fringe Festival and running until 18 October, he reflects on the interplay between sport, spontaneity and movement, and how the upstairs studio space shapes the work.

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Playwright Eric Jiang introduces Rhomboid, his funny and touching new play presented at Forty Five Downstairs as part of the Fringe Festival. Running until 11 October, he speaks about shaping the emotional tone of the work and staging it in an intimate independent venue.

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Writer, director and performer Therèsa Borg explores Speare Room, her adaptation of Helen Garner’s acclaimed novel. Presented with Victoria Opera at the Playhouse Arts Centre from 7 to 10 October, she discusses the challenge of translating Garner’s narrative voice into a theatrical form and the collaborative process behind the production.

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Curator Shelley McSpedden discusses NEW26, the landmark commissioning series returning to ACCA at Fed Square. She reflects on the curatorial approach behind the program and the significance of supporting ambitious contemporary work from emerging artists. The exhibition runs from 18 September to 22 November 2026.

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Spiegel Haus Melbourne reopens its Spiegeltent program this season with two major offerings that anchor a renewed period of circus, cabaret and performance at its Lonsdale Street location. Under the guidance of Creative Director Chris Mitchell, the venue launches Briefs: The Works in late September, bringing its high‑energy blend of circus, drag, burlesque and comedy back to the Spiegeltent for a four‑week run. From 21 October, La Ronde arrives as the season’s headline production, introducing a whirlwind of international circus artists in its Melbourne debut.
Alongside these flagship shows, the broader precinct continues to welcome a wide m...

Gavin Campbell joins the team to reflect on four decades of Raser, sharing stories from the dance floor, the community that shaped it, and the legacy the event continues to carry. The 40th anniversary celebration takes place at the Carlton Club on Bourke Street on 9 October, running from 8pm to 3am.

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Congress, created by Tristan Meecham and Bec Reid for All the Queens Men, returns to Melbourne Fringe as a large‑scale civic performance inviting citizens to deliver the speeches politicians never give. Presented outdoors in Argyle Square, Carlton, on Saturday 3 October, the event brings together community voices, writers and performers in a public gathering that blends choreography, music and civic storytelling.

Congress, Naarm

https://melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/congress

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Deaf artist Irene Holub premieres Manifesto of Silences at Arts House in North Melbourne from 6 to 11 October as part of Melbourne Fringe. The work reimagines opera through Auslan poetry, movement, projection and immersive sound, creating a visually rich performance accessible to both signers and non‑signers. Holub’s piece explores the historical suppression of Deaf identity and language, offering audiences a powerful, community‑centred experience.

Manifesto of Silences

https://whatson.melbourne.vic.gov.au/things-to-do/manifesto-of-silences

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Victorian Opera brings Benjamin Britten’s haunting chamber opera The Turn of the Screw to the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, with Kanen Breen performing the role of Peter Quint. Running from 29 September to 1 October, the production deepens the eerie tension of Henry James’s novella through Stuart Maunder’s direction and Roger Kirk’s atmospheric design. Audiences can expect a taut, unsettling experience shaped by Britten’s score and a cast led by Rachelle Durkin and Breen.
https://tix.com.au/opera/the-turn-of-the-screw
https://www.orchestravictoria.com.au/performances/the-turn-of-the-screw-victorian-opera

The post Kanen Breen – September 27...

Playwright Tom Holloway’s new work Eliza receives its world premiere with Melbourne Theatre Company at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank. Running from 28 September to 31 October 2026, this psychological thriller is inspired by real events surrounding MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum and his pioneering talk-therapy computer program ELIZA. Directed by Paige Rattray, the production follows Weizenbaum as he tests a program that simulates therapy using details from his secretary Becky’s private life, blurring the lines between code and human connection. As interest in the breakthrough intensifies, Eliza probes the ethical consequences of outsourcing our humanity to artificial intelligence, offe...

Director and concept creator Penny Baron, with assistant director Carolyn Hanna, premiere Prime Time, an intergenerational work by Born in a Taxi at The Substation, 1 Market Street, Newport. Running from 14 to 17 October 2026 as part of Melbourne Fringe, Prime Time brings a cast of 14 performers aged between 4 and 93 into the spotlight to challenge assumptions about age and ageing. Combining theatre, dance, live and recorded text, sound composition and visual design, the work interrogates age, power, visibility and value, drawing on extensive community interviews and workshops across the western suburbs to forge new dialogues across generations.
https://www.borninataxi.com...

Singer and pianist Jason Dean steps into the spotlight with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for The Music of Elton – 40 Years of MSO x Elton John. Across four Australian-exclusive concerts at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Road, Southbank, from Thursday 1 October to Sunday 4 October 2026, Jason leads Superband and the MSO through some of Elton John’s most memorable songs. Under the musical direction of Chong Lim AM, this tribute revisits the historic 1986 collaboration between Elton John and the MSO, blending orchestral richness with rock energy in a celebration of a defining moment in Australian music history.
https://www...

Award-winning director and designer Steven Mitchell Wright brings a visceral new staging of Lord of the Flies to Theatre Works in St Kilda. Adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams from William Golding’s classic novel, this highly physical production runs at Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street, from 18 September to 2 October 2026. Sound designer Jack Burmeister shapes a sonic world that amplifies the story’s descent from youthful optimism into fear, rivalry and power struggles, making this a gripping contemporary encounter with a timeless text.

https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2026/lord-of-the-flieshttps://melbournetheatrecalendar.com.au/event/lord-of-the-flies-2/2026-09-24/

Th...

Playwright Angus Cameron and director Iain Sinclair join the show to discuss LUKE, a world premiere developed through Red Stitch’s INK program at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre on Chapel Street, St Kilda East. With previews from 12 to 17 September and the main season running 18 September to 11 October 2026, LUKE is described as “a dark, winding examination of truth and regret.” Set across decades, the play begins on a night in 2007 when Chris, fresh out of high school, drinks, argues and philosophises with his older teacher friends Damon and Olena, until a buried secret surfaces and rewrites their lives. Angus and Iain tal...

Visual artist Robert Lee Davis appears ahead of the opening of Between the lands of now and then at Latrobe Regional Gallery in Morwell. The exhibition, running from 19 September to 29 November 2026, presents an imaginative Myriorama – a myriad of pictures and artworks rooted in storytelling, reflection and community‑driven anecdotes. Through mixed‑media collage and found objects gathered across Victoria, Gippsland and his own history, Davis explores how the lands we inhabit retain memory and bear witness to what we have achieved, removed and inhabited. In conversation, he reflects on “material memory,” and how upcycled materials can reframe our understanding of everyda...

At La Mama Courthouse, EXHIBIT brings a shape‑shifting theatre event to the 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival, and creators/performers Emma J Hawkins and Leisa Prowd join Sunday Arts Mag to unpack its beautifully strange world. Running from 30 September to 4 October 2026, EXHIBIT is billed as “a shape‑shifting theatre event – a collection of absurdities. Humans on display. Strange. Funny.” Presented by La Mama and Melbourne Fringe, the work sits between performance and installation, turning humans into the display and implicating the audience in the act of looking. Emma and Leisa, often mistaken for one another, lean into being seen and mis‑seen...

Second‑year NICA students Elise Poulton and Jaran Latona‑Phasuk step out from the rehearsal room to talk about Behind the Veil, the 2026 ensemble show at the National Circus Centre in Prahran. Running from 15 to 19 September at NICA’s theatre on 39-59 Green Street, Behind the Veil plunges audiences into a world where perfection is manufactured, productivity is worshipped and individuality is treated as a defect. Under director Kate Fryer, the ensemble uses Chinese pole, swinging trapeze, flying silks, Cyr wheel, handstands, contortion and acrobatics to collide breathtaking physical feats with dark satire. Elise and Jaran share how the show i...

Senior Curator, Department of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Ewan McEoin joins the program to discuss the NGV’s world‑premiere exhibition Plant Life: The Nature of Design.
Plant Life’s broader exploration of plant‑based materials as alternatives to plastics and synthetics reflects on Indigenous knowledge systems, regenerative design, and how fashion can move beyond the petrochemical century. It’s on at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia from 28 August 2026 to 7 February 2027.
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/media_release/plant-life-the-nature-of-design-explores-the-future-of-plant-based-materials-as-an-alternative-to-plastics-and-non-renewable-materials/

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Monty Python’s Spamalot is about to gallop into Melbourne, and Sunday Arts Mag catches producer/director Drew Anthony and emerging WAAPA graduate Jesse Vasiliadas just days before preview. Drew Anthony Creative brings the Tony Award‑winning musical comedy to the historic Athenaeum Theatre on Collins Street, with the Melbourne season running from 16 September to 11 October 2026. Jesse Vasiliadas steps into the role of Sir Lancelot, part of a riotous retelling of King Arthur’s quest that blends tap‑dancing knights, big Broadway vocals and Monty Python’s anarchic humour. Together, Drew and Jesse talk about restoring Spamalot to Australian stages, th...

Award winning choreographer Tra Mi Dinh closes the program with a preview of 7 Dances for 7 People, her new ensemble work premiering at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre from 9 to 19 September as part of Darebin Arts Speakeasy and the Darebin FUSE Festival Open Access program. Inspired by one of humanity’s oldest and most mysterious obsessions, the number seven, Dinh describes the piece as a hypnotic ritual of precision, endurance and devotion, performed by seven exceptional dancers. She explains how composer Tilman Robinson’s score underpins intricate choreographic patterning, and how lighting designer Rachel Lee and costume and set designer Geof...

NGV Senior Curator of Australian Art Beckett Rozentals joins the show to introduce Margaret Preston, the first major retrospective on the artist in more than twenty years. Opening at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in Fed Square on 4 September 2026 and running until 31 January 2027, the exhibition brings together a substantial body of work, including iconic still lifes and woodblock prints, alongside sculpture and archival material. Rozentals discusses the curatorial approach that situates Preston’s modernist practice within its historical context while placing her work in dialogue with contemporary First Nations artists who respond to her use of Indigenous visual vo...

Choreographer Zoe Bastin appears on Sunday Arts Magazine to talk about The River, described as a new site responsive contemporary dance work set within a natural riverside amphitheatre at Bungies Hole in Werribee. Bastin outlines her interest in working with landscape as collaborator, drawing on the textures, sounds and shifting light of the river environment to shape the choreography. Framed within the context of Melbourne Fringe Festival, she speaks about the challenge and exhilaration of presenting dance outside conventional theatre spaces, inviting audiences to experience movement, water and terrain as an intertwined performance. The segment highlights the planned two...

Curator Hamish Sawyer joins the program to mark forty years of Linden New Art, connecting the gallery’s anniversary exhibition Time Moves Through These Walls: 40 Years of Linden New Art with the broader celebrations around its 40th Anniversary Fundraising Gala, Back the Future. The exhibition, running at Linden’s Acland Street home in St Kilda, traces the layered histories of the site from pre colonial Yalukit Willam Country through private residence and hotel to contemporary art space, foregrounding Linden’s pioneering role in experimental practice. Sawyer discusses how this history feeds into the gala’s focus on future ambitions, as Linde...

Accordionists Sofia Chapman and Svetlana Bunic bring a playful, street level energy to Sunday Arts Magazine with their celebration of the accordion in the festival they describe as Freshly Squeezed. Drawing on upcoming performances at Wesley Anne, 250 High Street, Northcote, and Ragtime Tavern, 206 Tyler Street, Preston, they share their enthusiasm for intimate venues where audiences can sit close to the bellows and feel the music’s pulse. In conversation, Chapman and Bunic talk about the accordion’s versatility across folk, jazz and experimental traditions, and how their programming aims to showcase the instrument’s expressive range while building a commun...

Curator Ian Jackson joins Sunday Arts Magazine to delve into ENCORE! 50 Objects. 50 Years. One Collection, a landmark exhibition drawn from the Australian Performing Arts Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne. Presented at the Australian Museum of Performing Arts (AMPA) from 16 September 2026 to 9 May 2027, ENCORE! celebrates fifty years of Australia’s performing arts history through fifty carefully selected objects. Jackson reflects on the curatorial process behind this anniversary project, explaining how the breadth of the collection across circus, dance, music, opera and theatre has shaped the exhibition’s narrative and its invitation for audiences to revisit defining moments of Australian stage cult...

Director Kitan Petkovski and actor Aya Taur discuss Savager by Patricia Cornelius, a blistering and provocative work that tears into the rituals of mateship, violence and power. Their production at Theatre Works in St Kilda brings the intensity of Cornelius’s writing to the stage with sharp focus. Savager runs from 2 to 12 September.

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Alana Seal, co curator of Quiet Corners, explores the art of Ame Bale and the exhibition’s celebration of a pioneering Australian painter. The show highlights Bale’s sensitivity to place and atmosphere, drawing attention to quieter moments within the visual field. Quiet Corners is on at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara Arts in Hawthorn, until 17 October.

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Roslyn Oades introduces The Enormous Radio, a concept driven performance in which a constellation of radios sparks an uncanny encounter with the animal world. Presented by Substation and Chamber Made as part of the Fringe Festival, the work invites audiences into a sonic landscape that blurs the familiar and the strange. It runs at Substation, Newport, from 30 September to 10 October.

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Andrew Chapman shares the story behind Green Bus, a fifty five year photographic journey through the streets of Melbourne. His exhibition charts decades of change, character and community across the city, offering a long view of urban life. The work is on display at City Gallery, Melbourne Town Hall, from 3 September to 19 February 2027.

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Kate Yaxley and Christian Gillett from Soundworks Productions discuss their staging of Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Their production brings the dark humour, tension and theatricality of the piece into sharp focus at Chapel Off Chapel, where it runs from 11 to 20 September.

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Andrew Delaney reflects on the Gender Bender Exhibition, a showcase shaped by the fourteen artists who influenced him while growing up in the country. Grace Jones, David Bowie, Annie Lennox and Divine were among the figures who helped form his creative imagination, and the exhibition traces how those early inspirations continue to echo through his visual practice. The show opens this Wednesday, 2 September, from 6 to 8pm at Dawn and Mable wine bar, 83 Acland Street, St Kilda.

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Todd McKenney reflects on a career that spans more than a thousand performances in The Boy from Oz, a long list of major musicals and his widely recognised role on Dancing with the Stars. He speaks about the discipline behind longevity, the joy of reinvention and the evolving landscape of Australian performance. Audiences can look forward to a conversation with one of the country’s most enduring and versatile stage and screen artists.

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Award‑winning songwriter, singer, comedian and actor Geraldine Quinn dives into the creation of Campervan: An Ozploitation Horror Musical, a Fringe Festival offering that blends cult‑cinema homage with theatrical mischief. She talks about the show’s musical style, its tongue‑in‑cheek horror elements and the thrill of building a new work for Fringe audiences. Campervan will be performed at the Fringe Hub, Trades Hall, from Wednesday 7 October to Sunday 11 October, with shows at 6pm on 7–10 October and at 5pm on 11 October.

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