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The Show of the Year 2015

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Time moves quickly, doesn’t it? Before you know what’s happening, you wake up in a new year – and while you collect yourself, the year just past dims quickly into shadow.

But wait, not so fast!

This December, a Wheeler Centre tradition returns to unravel and revel in the delights and lowlights, majesties and travesties of 2015. Follow sugar-tongued songbird Casey Bennetto and a bevy of the nation’s most charmed and charming entertainers and writers – Santilla Chingaipe, The Listies, Marc Fennell, Penny Wong, First Dog on the Moon, Nicholas J. Johnson, Thomas Keneally, Toby Halligan, Jane Caro, Shellie Morris, Clare Wright, Tina Del Twist and Sami Shah – as they farewell the year in style … one month at a time.

In 2013, there was Sammy J’s hilarious musical welcome to our future king (thanks Kate and Wills), and ‘Marngrook’ – Maxine Beneba Clarke’s probing, poignant meditation on race in football. Last year, we dodged Die Roten Punkte’s giant floating balloons (in celebration of Germany’s World Cup victory), heard passionate calls for justice from Zoe Daniel and Hannah Kent, and farewelled political giant Gough Whitlam with Monica Weightman’s rousing performance of ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. What will 2015’s big stories be?

If you only see one show this year, let it be the Show of the Year, as our guests tell it like it was in five-minute bursts of song, story and slam poetry. It’ll be richly funny, it’ll be poignant, and everything in between.

Featuring

Casey Bennetto

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous... Read more

Santilla Chingaipe

Santilla Chingaipe is a filmmaker, historian and author, whose work explores settler colonialism, slavery, and post-colonial migration in Australia. Chingaipe’s first book of non-fiction detailing the untold stories of convicts of African descent is forthcoming, and the critically acclaimed and aw... Read more

The Listies

Writing and performing comedy for kids and their adults (kidults), the Listies are Melbourne-based duo Rich Higgins and Matt Kelly. Originally meeting each other during a production of Roald Dahl’s The Twits (Rich was Mr Twit, Matt was Mrs Twit) they enjoyed performing toge... Read more

Marc Fennell

Marc Fennell is an Australian radio and TV presenter, film critic, award-winning technology journalist, author, MC and the host of The Feed on SBS. Marc’s first book, That Movie Book, was a guide for people who stay home watching films every weekend of the year. His most recent book, Plan... Read more

Penny Wong

Penny Wong is the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. Penny was born in Malaysia. As an eight year old she moved to Australia with her family and settled in Adelaide. Penny graduated in law and arts from the University of Adelaide. She went on to practice ... Read more

First Dog on the Moon

First Dog on the Moon is the internationally renowned, Walkley Award-winning and also very humble cartoonist for the Guardian Australia. First Dog’s latest collection, A Treasury of Cartoons, has just been released and is really quite good. ... Read more

Nicholas J. Johnson

Nicholas J. Johnson grew up in the circus around carnies and sideshow folk, understanding and practicing sleight of hand and card tricks, and intimate with the power of manipulation, deception and distraction. After decades of rubbing shoulders with fraudsters and liars, Nicholas J. Johnso... Read more

Jane Caro

Jane Caro AM is a Walkley Award-winning Australian columnist, author, novelist, broadcaster, advertising writer, documentary maker, feminist and social commentator. Jane appears frequently on Q&A, The Drum and Sunrise. She has created and presented five documentary series for ABC’s Compass... Read more

Clare Wright

‘I am a feminist therefore I commit feminist acts. I’m not going to undermine the political importance of what I do.’ La Trobe University historian Professor Clare Wright has worked as an author, academic, political speechwriter, historical consultant, and radio and TV broadcaster. Her latest... Read more

Tina Del Twist

Truly unique, Tina Del Twist is Australia’s much-loved nightingale, known for her ‘beautiful voice and wicked sense of comic timing’ (the Age). With a voice as smooth as honey and a comedic wit that could shred brie, you’ll have a ball enjoying the talents of Tina Del Twist. Tina Del Twist h... Read more

Sami Shah

Sami Shah is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, and journalist. Sami is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, and is the Ambassador-at-Large for PEN Melbourne. ... Read more

Toby Halligan

Toby Halligan writes for Channel 10’s The Project and SBS’s Legally Brown, and has appeared on ABC’s Strictly Speaking. His debut comedy show, Electile Dysfunction, was nominated for the best newcomer award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and he ... Read more

Location

Athenaeum Theatre

188 Collins Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.