Triple-threat Andy Cook is one of Australia’s greatest showmen with a string of major musical credits to his name including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Strictly Ballroom, Oklahoma and Chicago.

But when COVID hit moments after he’d achieved a new career high – announced as the villainous Duke in the Australian premiere production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical – Andy’s personal and professional life was thrown into turmoil.

“I felt like I constantly spent time inside for two years and was an artist sometimes… I remember going to the airport and having severe anxiety about being outside of my house.”

In this podcast, Andy talks honestly about COVID’s mental health toll, the personal sacrifices of life on the road and taking back control of his artistic voice.

“Often you feel like you can’t say no when you really need to… If you just jump from gig to gig, you’ve blinked and you’ve missed everything… You start to become resentful of the job, and you never want that as an artist.”

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GUEST: Andy Cook, Australian music theatre star

HOST: Adam Brunes

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“There can be 100 positive comments and one nasty one and that’s the one I hang my hat on.”

Powerhouse performer Shoshana Bean made her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning production of Hairspray in 2002 and has proved a vocal juggernaut ever since.

The Los Angeles-based musical theatre star has inhabited some of the genre’s most iconic leading lady roles including Elphaba in Wicked, Fanny Brice in Funny Girl and CeeCee Bloom in Beaches.

“It was really stifling and frustrating and it made me feel like I was doing musical theatre wrong, that I just didn’t have the instincts to do it right.”

After a 13-year absence where she concentrated on her solo music and performance career, Shoshana was coaxed back to Broadway in 2019 and cast against type as Jenna in Waitress, a refreshingly modern and widely acclaimed musical adaptation of a 2007 film.

In this podcast, Shoshana talks honestly about the acute demands of audience expectation; what it’s like to be publicly judged, critiqued and compared; and how “making it” on Broadway sometimes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“That’s what you think … I’ve got to get to Broadway … then you get there and it’s like, ‘Why is this not enough?’ Because it’s not the Holy Grail.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Shoshana Bean, Broadway star and chart-topping singer

HOST: Adam Brunes

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“We got obnoxiously drunk and started inserting the ‘puppet’ into famous movie titles and ‘Dead Puppet Society’ just stuck. We knew we were going to change it when we came up with a better idea and it’s now 12 years old.”

In their own words, Nicholas Paine and David Morton are “hell bent on bringing their inimitable brand of entertainment to the world”.

In everyone else’s book, they’re the two guys who registered one of the coolest company names in showbiz.

Nick and David founded Dead Puppet Society in 2008 to create deeply imaginative theatre where the old school meets the technological and the mythic meets the modern.

“When we first started the company … we were hell-bent on this idea it was adult theatre.”

In this podcast, they reflect on a remarkable career trajectory that started at QUT, blazed a trail through Brisbane’s most respected arts organisations and festivals then on to the world stage, including residencies in New York and productions in the UK.

Yet through it all, they continue to battle a global misconception that puppetry is just for kids.

David and Nick offer their honest opinions on Brisbane as a breeding ground for artists, reveal their huge international plans and share some of the cringeworthy company names drunkenly proposed.

“Anything is possible. I mean, we’d get in a lot of trouble if we had to rip a limb off our performer but it’s fine for a puppet.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: David Morton, Creative Director and Nicholas Paine, Executive Producer of Dead Puppet Society

HOST: Belinda Seeney

“I think I’ve been engrossed in an industry that I absolutely adore for so long now that I’m a little bit tired and little bit over it and it’s not the attitude I want to have.”

It’s not a stretch to say 2019 was both exhausting and exhilarating for Brisbane performer Tom Oliver.

The globetrotting singer, actor and creator had spent only three of the past 52 weeks in his hometown; his career taking him from a luxury cruise liner in the Caribbean to dancing in a bedazzled lobster costume at La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre.

“I was literally at the traffic lights yesterday going, “am I about to just quit the industry?”

I think that’s what 2020 is for me, really trying to nut out where I sit in this space.”

In this podcast, Tom discusses the – metaphorical and physical – crossroads moment that has him questioning the future of his career; dissects what it’s really like to get everything you’ve ever wished for; and nominates who he believes has the chops to lead Brisbane’s creative and artistic community forward.

He also reveals what it’s really like living on a floating city, whether showbusiness is as glamourous as it’s made out to be and spills the beans on the New Year’s Eve he spent partying with Australian rock royalty on Sydney Harbour.

“The idea of travelling the world, seeing shows, and then bringing them back to Brisbane is a pretty exciting thought.”

“A lot of us have spent years and years and years creating works, seeing work, hanging out with friends, falling in love there, having our heart broken there… so that space holds a lot of memory, a lot of ghosts.”

It was a huge 2019 for Metro Arts: selling the Heritage-listed building it’s called home for decades, establishing a multi-million dollar arts fund, negotiating new digs and through it all, programming and commissioning a packed slate of contemporary work.

Leading the multi-arts organisation through these unchartered waters was Jo Thomas; meeting emotional opposition to the sale with calm and reason, throwing herself into the unfamiliar world of investment and finance and still programming award-winning theatre.

“I’ve had the craziest year understanding investment of money, meeting every property developer in Brisbane, going and meeting philanthropists and people who run foundations and advocating constantly.”

In this podcast, Jo reflects on Metro Arts’ impending 40th birthday; the creative solutions arts organisations must find to thrive in the face of dwindling government funding; and how artists must be afforded space and opportunity to push the envelope, to experiment and to deliver important work without the imposition of commercial conditions.

With a background in cabaret and circus, Jo reveals the surprising similarities between her performance past and her future as custodian of Metro Art’s once-in-a-generation evolution.

“You’ve got to keep your focus on everything and make sure not one little plate can drop, not one little area loses your focus.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Jo Thomas, Creative Director and CEO of Metro Arts

HOST: Belinda Seeney

“To be a successful artist these days you have to really understand the business of what we do.”

“Accidentally.” This is Joel Edmondson’s honest answer to how he found his calling as an expert in change management, flipping arts organisations and the music industry as a whole.

Coming from a background in film and moving from education and research management projects to running gigs in a DIY venue under a sex shop, Joel has melded these experiences to “luck” his way into a successful arts career.

“Bad art makes for good water cooler fodder. People love to talk about what they didn’t like about something, which is I guess a form of entertainment.”

The driving force behind QMusic and BIGSOUND, Joel was appointed Queensland Music Festival’s (QMF) Executive Director in November 2018.

In this podcast, Joel looks back on his career trajectory, giving thoughtful insight into the uneasy alliance between creative and commercial interests within the arts sector, the hurdles facing the industry and what it takes to make a good leader.

“We’re not just competing with other live experiences, we’re competing with screens, we’re competing with the amount of hours people have to work, distractions on emails, social media, time with family…”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Joel Edmondson, Executive Director of Queensland Music Festival

HOST: Adam Brunes

“I have seen so much shit over the years that it is so hard to actually nut down what I think is the most cringeworthy!”

A prolific performer and producer across stage and screen, Naomi Price knows what she’s talking about.

Long before she dazzled audiences – and superstar Ricky Martin – on The Voice Australia, Price had cemented her well-earned reputation as a tenacious and talented entertainer.

She’s delivered a moving Mary Magdalene and taken a wrecking ball to Miley Cyrus; performed in the premiere season of Ladies in Black and toured Australia in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

But, as she discusses frankly and fearlessly with IMHO, she’s ready to make an even bigger splash in Queensland’s arts and entertainment industry.

“My provocation to women is, why are we continuing to realise men’s vision?”

In this podcast, Price draws on her formidable experience to map out her aspirations for the state’s creative and performance sector.

She is unflinchingly honest about her own artistic leadership ambitions, her blueprint for engaging Queensland audiences, her plans to flip “pedestrian theatre” on its head and why she will never take part in Sober October again.

“I’d rather be ignited with something – with an opinion, with a thought, with passion, with conviction – than walk away from another piece of diluted rubbish.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Naomi Price, performer and co-director of The Little Red Company

HOST: Belinda Seeney

“It’s always been my philosophy that one of the worst things an organisation can do when faced with those kinds of challenges is to retreat...”

By David Berthold’s own admission, he burst onto La Boite Theatre Company’s stage with a “ridiculously large” season filled with “some very high ambition”.

His signature boldness and inclination to go big is an attitude he has applied to Brisbane Festival, the nation’s largest major international arts festival. On the eve of opening his fifth and final Brisbane Festival, the outgoing – but sometimes shy – Artistic Director takes IMHO on a trip down memory lane as he ruminates on his 11-year residency in the city.

“People were expecting a diminished level of work. The opposite happened.”

In this podcast, Berthold reveals the challenges he faced steering a theatre company in dire financial straits and how Hamlet proved the unlikeliest of saviours.

The arts and cultural leader is frank in his assessment of Queensland’s arts sector and predicts the trends and issues that will shape and decide the fate of the industry.

“That has to change, otherwise our arts and cultural scene risks not delivering what it needs to do in a city that’s rapidly transforming.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: David Berthold, Brisbane Festival Artistic Director

HOST: Adam Brunes