Elise. Writer & caffeine-based life form. Exploring my city and discovering its best kept secrets. Join me on my adventures!
10/09/2025
THAT Production Company brought Clare Barron’s Dance Nation to Metro Arts last month, a coming-of-age story framed by the trials and triumphs of a troupe of teenaged dancers. The cast and creatives delivered a profoundly impactful performance in their fearless embrace of all the joy, shame, desire, dreaming, and ambition of this transitional time.
Read my full review online now.
Image credit: Kenn Santos THAT Production Company brought Clare Barron’s Dance Nation to Metro Arts, a powerfully, truthfully complex coming-of-age story framed by the trials and triumphs of a trou…
03/09/2025
Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble's significant skill and stagecraft brought Shakespeare's much-loved fairyland comedy to life with music, mischief, and magic at PIP Theatre last month.
Read my full review online now 🧚♀️🫏✨
Image credit: Benjamin Prindable Photography Lose yourself in the enchanted forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, brought to life with music, mischief, and magic by the Queensland Shakespeare …
26/08/2025
Presented by The Curators, The Dragon Queen of Argos sets the stage ablaze telling an ancient story of vengeance with magnetic new energy❤️🔥
A densely layered, highly theatrical work of eccentric glamour, this post-dramatic work draws on Charles Mee, Aeschylus, and TS Eliot, among others. Performed with thrilling intensity, it together mythology, music, and poetry from a wide range of sources to weave a complex tapestry that shifts and glitters in the light.
Playing until 30 August.
Rainee Skinner as Clytemnestra, photographed by Michael Beh Presented by The Curators’ Theatre, The Dragon Queen of Argos sets the stage ablaze as it tells an ancient story of vengeance with magnet…
20/08/2025
Music is the soundtrack to our lives, featuring in life’s most significant moments. Camerata - Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra explores the relationship between memory and music in this nostalgic, moving, and humorous concert.
The musicians will also be joined by distinguished actor Barbara Lowing, to narrate the concert, and award-winning singer/songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke for a selection of songs.
Playing 13 September at the Concert Hall, presented with QPAC and Brisbane Festival.
Camerata: Your Eternal Memories Saturday 13 September 2025, 7pm Concert Hall, QPAC Music is the soundtrack to our lives, featuring in life’s most significant moments. Music triggers memories – but …
18/08/2025
The Grammy Award-winning Takács Quartet presents the world premiere of Sonnet in Emigration, Australian composer Cathy Milliken’s new work for string quartet and spoken voice. This major new work, narrated by Australian screen legend and Cathy's sister, Angie Milliken, is framed by two masterpieces from the founding fathers of the string quartet: Haydn’s Rider Quartet and Beethoven’s third Razumovsky Quartet.
Playing at QPAC on 20 August, presented by Musica Viva Australia.
Takács Quartet & Angie Milliken 20 August 2025 QPAC Concert Hall, South Bank In a celebration of two major anniversaries, the Grammy Award-winning Takács Quartet returns to Australia this Augus…
15/08/2025
Produced by Assembly of Elephants & All Forms Considered, and presented as part of Queensland Theatre’s DOOR 3 programme, So Many Splintered Parts is an anthology of seven new short works by Brisbane playwrights.
Despite strong performances, there is a lack of overall cohesion and the individual plays vary widely in terms of creative and thematic sophistication, with issues like the rising cost of living and the ongoing genocide in Gaza repeatedly mentioned but not meaningfully explored. Promising “writing on the razor’s edge”, it barely leaves a splinter.
You can read my full review online via Limelight and So Many Splintered Parts is playing until 23 August.
Read the Limelight review.
13/08/2025
Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble is set to enchant audiences with a bold and vibrant production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Full of live music, comic confusion, and the messy, transformative power of love (with a dash of potent potion), this production of one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies is sure to warm even the coldest of hearts this winter.
Playing at Theatre from 15 - 30 August.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 15 – 30 August 2025 PIP Theatre, Milton “The course of true love never did run smooth…” On a midsummer night, four young lovers—embroiled in a love quadrangle—…
11/08/2025
After 20 years of waiting Clytemnestra, now more Dragon than Woman, can finally enact her burning vengeance. The ghost of her daughter, Iphigenia, spurs her on to action. She is now the Dragon Queen of Regret, of Reckoning, of Revenge, of Retaliation and Redemption. This is a Killing Spree in Couture!
Written & directed by Michael Beh, the second play in The Curators' Post Dramatic Troy Disorder cycle pays homage to Aeschylus, Charles Mee’s Remaking Project + TS Eliot, John Dowland, Tchaikovsky, Brahms & Marianne Faithfull.
Playing from 15 August - 6 September.
The Dragon Queen of Argos 15 August – 6 September 2025 ‘The Barney’, 28 St Barnabas Place, Red Hill For mature audiences – find more details on The Curator’s website W…
08/08/2025
The music of Elvis comes alive in All Shook Up, presented by Phoenix Ensemble.
A small Midwestern town is thrown into a frenzy with the arrival of Chad, a good-looking, motorcycle-riding roustabout, who rides from town to town with a guitar on his back, blue suede shoes on his feet, and a song in his heart. Repressed by their conservative mayor, the town begins to come alive in one zany night that will change the town forever.
Playing at Pavillion Theatre, Beenleigh until 23 August.
All Shook Up 1 – 23 August 2025 Pavilion Theatre, Beenleigh Showgrounds, James Street, Beenleigh The music of Elvis comes alive in All Shook Up, presented in Beenleigh by award-winning commun…
06/08/2025
La Boite Theatre and Dead Puppet Society present the world premiere of WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!, a whirlwind 75-minute horror-comedy that tackles personal and ecological grief.
Injecting the slow creep of climate change with a leviathan-sized sense of urgency and resisting a neat resolution, this is both a black comedy addressing ecological ambivalence and a charming, sentimental celebration of Brisbane 👾🎡🏙
You can read my review via Limelight, and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! is playing until 16 August.
Read the Limelight review.
31/07/2025
PIP Theatre’s production of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, adapted from the translation by Ed Emery, turns the force of Fo’s ferocious wit onto local history.
As cutting and clever as it was chaotic and camp, this excellent new adaptation by Deidre Grace and Helen Strube captured the light and dark of the original material, while applying its ideals and critique to a new context.
Read my full review online now, and Accidental Death of an Anarchist is playing until 2 August 🖤
(L to R) Dana Summer, Izabela Wasilewska, Rebel Star, Deidre Grace, Isaiah Harrison, and Greg Scurr (front), photographed by Jade Ellis PIP Theatre’s Queensland-flavoured production of Dario …
30/07/2025
Presented by Backyard Flamingo as part of Anywhere Festival Brisbane, Samantha Hill’s She Works Hard for (No) Money was a clever and comedic exploration of gendered expectations surrounding unpaid labour and the mental load.
Read my full review online now, or experience it for yourself until this Saturday, 2 August🧹✨
Carla Haynes and Ellen Hardisty, photographed by Laura Fois Presented as part of Anywhere Festival Brisbane, Samantha Hill’s She Works Hard for (No) Money was a clever and funny exploration o…
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I’m not sure where I heard that (I think the idea came from a TED talk event at the State Library) but, grounded in the romantic idea of being a tourist in your own city, I started Backstreet Brisbane in 2014 as the guide I wish I’d had. Coming from a hometown of less than one thousand, the sheer vastness and unknown of the city overwhelmed me initially and I stuck mainly to Queen Street until new friends took me outside my comfort zone to see and experience new things – wonderful bars and cafes tucked down alleys, parks and green spaces I might never have found, live music venues I would have been afraid to enter alone.
Whether you are in town for a few days or have lived here all your life, there is always something new and surprising to discover. The story of our city is constantly changing, and we are a part of it (which is why I also started Backstreet Brisbaners, a verbatim interview series with Brisbane’s brilliant community).
Backstreet Brisbane is now in its fifth year, and it has grown and evolved as I have, from cheap-as-chips student days to something resembling adulthood. Backstreet Brisbane has come to cover a broader range of lifestyle and events in our city – food and drink, things to see and do – and has developed a focus on performing arts, which is one of my great loves. If you’d like the best of Brisbane delivered to your inbox each month, you can sign up for the Backstreet Brisbane Bulletin here.
If you’ve read this far, thank you – I’ll continue to get to know Brisbane a little better, and these things are always more exciting with friends. I look forward to sharing these ongoing adventures with you.
