Bell Shakespeare’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice takes the play’s action from 16th century Venice to a contemporary setting, and the themes of religious prejudice, forgiveness and...
When Joel ma was a kid, the matriarch of his family was his Chinese-Australian grandmother Edith. A born-again Christian, she would hold him close before their ritual family yumcha and...
Comedians Amy Hetherington and Kirsty Webeck first met at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), where they were playing at the same venue. It wasn’t long before they were...
Off The Leash was rather thrilled to correspond with legendary New York performer Penny Arcade in the lead-up to her show Longing Lasts Longer, a hilarious and biting satire of...
It sounds like the plot of the best dance movie you’ve never seen – two b-boys from different cities and utterly different walks of life, face off in a breakdance...
Darwin – what happened? When I agreed to bring my hills-hoist and grindhouse cabaret up to the Darwin Fringe, little did I know I was going to experience one of...
Staged at twilight in the leafy Botanic Gardens, Bamboo Moon is based on the ancient Japanese story The Tale of Princess Kaguya and stars a youthful cast from Darwin’s Corrugated...
Comedian Kuah Jenhan's show Like This Like Dad was inspired by his very traditional Chinese father. Off The Leash caught up with the sought-after Malaysian comedian ahead of his Darwin...
Tracks’ last Darwin Festival show, Landed, followed three characters returning home to Darwin after a life away from it. Emotions, belonging and connection to place are a crucial theme of...
Two celebrations at the "bookends of life" lead proceedings in Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday – birthday parties for an 80-year-old and an 18-year-old. But while the theatre audience is...
By Will Crawford. If you like your stand up smart, angry and full of dubious advice to the world's gentrifiers, then the sharp, biting satire of visiting New York comic...
It's no surprise that Shakespeare's most delightful and fantastical play found further life as a ballet. Set to a romantic score by Felix Mendelssohn, the Melbourne City Ballet brings the...
July sees Darwin electrified by some dynamic comic talent. If Adelaide has Mad March, Darwin now has Jovial and Juvenile July. Maybe it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue but...
In 1881 the Kulin clans, facing the imminent loss of their land and freedoms, brought about a Parliamentary Inquiry to continue living on the Victorian Aboriginal reserve of Coranderrk as...
Leah Shelton was performing in a glitzy variety show in Las Vegas when she had the idea for Terror Australis, an anti-burlesque cabaret show exploring Australian culture’s dark undercurrent. Off...
"The power of empathy is greater than the power of death," says playwright Mary Anne Butler as she premieres her powerful new play The Sound of Waiting. Butler wrote the...
Trapped in a domestic rut with an ungrateful, boorish family, middle-aged Liverpudlian housewife Shirley Valentine is going to waste in suburban drudgery. But you can’t exactly call her downtrodden. When...
Émile Zola's 19th Century novel Thérèse Raquin comes to the Darwin stage this month in a critically acclaimed play by Melbourne’s Dirty Pretty Theatre. The play follows a young woman...
The swagman has appeared under many guises: hero, sheep thief, martyr. Now Darwin playwright Levin Diatschenko offers another version of the fabled itinerant: a travelling mystic who delivers justice and...
An annual, carefully curated showcase of local talent, Laugh It Off revels in what it means to be ‘Territorian’ – and, in salutation to Territory Day, there’s a special Territory...