Eastern Reporter Bayswater & Bassendean
Whopper of a year
THE WA Academy of Performing Arts has unveiled its performance program for 2020.
WAAPA’s new executive dean, David Shirley, presented program highlights and his vision for the academy in the Richard Gill Auditorium at ECU’s Mt Lawley campus last month.
Highlights included the mid-year musical Mamma
Mia! moving to His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth from June 12 to 18, marking the beginning of a threeyear partnership between WAAPA and the Perth Theatre Trust.
The partnership will enable WAAPA students to train and perform in WA’s premier arts venues, including the Albany Entertainment Centre which will host students from the contemporary music program and high school musicians from Albany SHS and Great Southern Grammar.
WAAPA’s pre-professional dance company, LINK, will get to use the Studio Underground at the State Theatre Centre for its season Well from April 1 to 3.
In an international first, the Minderoo Foundation will help WAAPA present Pina Bausch’s Tannhauser Bacchanal.
This is the first time Tannhauser Bacchanal has been performed outside of Germany and the first time WA audiences will have an opportunity to experience Bausch’s work.
It will be performed during the academy’s Icon: An Extraordinary Event from November 13 to 19.
As well as the Bausch piece, former company members of Tanztheatre Wuppertal, Meryl Tankard and Michael Whaites, will remount works inspired by Bausch with dance students.
Theatre highlights include Brendan Pomerance’s multi-award-winning play
The Elephant Man, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard’s
A Lie of the Mind.