The Show of the Year

Tripod is a musical comedy trio, absorbing a broad range of performance styles into their armoury of parody, satire and improvisation. Their latest studio album is Men of Substance, and in early 2013, they starred in the title role of The Dragon (Malthouse Theatre).

The group toured Men of Substance nationally for two years, including seasons at the Sydney Opera House and Arts Centre Melbourne, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Perth International Comedy Festival, BrisbaneComedy Festival and Darwin Festival. Their musical Tripod versus the Dragon toured internationally and was released on DVD through Beyond Entertainment.

Tripod also appeared on the ‘in memoriam’ segment of the 2011 Logie broadcast, with a rendition of Paul Kelly’s ‘Meet Me in the Middle of the Air’ alongside Eddie Perfect. In 2013, collaborating with Perfect again (as Perfect Tripod), they premiered Australian Songs at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island (2008) won the Victorian, New South Wales, West Australian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, as well as the John Button Prize for Political Writing, and a Ned Kelly Award for crime writing. Her latest book is The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (2018). She is also the author of two novels, A Child’s Book of True Crime and The Engagement.

Singer/songwriter Henry Wagons was recently named one of Melbourne’s Top 100 Influential People. Rolling Stone compared his sound to ‘the lovechild of Nick Cave and Johnny Cash’.

After five albums with his band, Wagons, and a North American debut with the 2011 release of Rumble, Shake and Tumble, Henry has struck out on his own with ‘Expecting Company?’ enlisting the help of six stellar guests: Alison Mosshart (The Kills, The Dead Weather), Sophia Brous, Canada’s Jenn Grant, Robert Forster (The Go-Betweens), Patience Hodgson (The Grates) and Gossling.

Hannah Gadsby is an award-winning Australian comedian who thinks quickly and moves slowly. She quickly rose to prominence after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006. She has toured internationally and appeared on Australian and New Zealand television.

You can see her on ABC TV’s Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight, or live at a festival near you.

Desperate to make use of her art history degree, Hannah has written and presented two specials for ABC TV’s Artscape and takes every opportunity to present her incredibly popular comedic art lectures at festivals around the world.

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 Ideas at Sydney Opera House.

Born in 1969, Bennetto spent his formative years amongst the fragrant meadows and blossoming malls of Greensborough, Melbourne.

He made his way to university, procured a BA and worked variously as a proofreader, a copywriter, an IT specialist and as the lead singer in the band Skin, which garnered national commercial airplay for their 1994 EP, Waking Up With You.

As part of the ‘Drowsy Drivers’ project, in 2004 Casey wrote a musical theatre biography of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, KEATING!.

In late 2008, Casey premiered a new project as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival: A Largely Fanciful History Of The Spiegeltent, in which he also starred; he also wrote and performed in 2009's Evening and provided the songs for the ever-threatening Christmas pantomime The Terminativity in 2010–11. He served as dramaturge on Eddie’s Shane Warne: The Musical as well as making contributions to Company B’s The Adventures Of Snugglepot And Cuddlepie and Die Roten Punkte’s Super Musikant and Kunst Rock.

He scored both series of Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar's Lowdown and was nominated for an AACTA with Shellie Morris and Tim Cole for work on the 2014 musical documentary Prison Songs. He appeared with Alan Brough as underappreciated alternative rock icons The Narelles in 2015, and has hosted A Swingin' Bella Christmas for the past five years. He has hosted The Show Of The Year for the Wheeler Centre since the show's inception in 2013.

Most recently, he scored the ABC TV series Get Krack!n and is currently working on several things at once, obviously to the detriment of all of them.

Casey has also hosted a regular show on 3CR, worked extensively for PBS FM and made many appearances on 774 ABC Melbourne as host, co-host and guest.

His appearances on ABC TV’s Spicks And Specks resurface occasionally to shame him.

Lally Katz is an award-winning Melbourne based playwright. Her play Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd premiered at Malthouse Theatre and won the Louis Esson Prize for Drama at the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Lally is a graduate of the University of Melbourne’s School of Studies in Creative Arts and she studied playwriting at London’s Royal Court Theatre. She is a core member of Stuck Pigs Squealing Theatre which has built a reputation as one of the country’s most exciting theatre companies. Lally’s newest work, three short plays featuring one of her recurring characters, The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, recently opened as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Recently Lally adapted selected stories from the bible, forming parts one and three (co-adapter) of The Mysteries: Genesis directed by Matthew Lutton and Tom Wright premiering at Sydney Theatre Company. Lally’s play When The Hunter Returns was commissioned and produced by The Gaiety School of Acting in Ireland and had a return season at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Lally has active commissions with, Company B, Malthouse Theatre, Arena Theatre Company and continues to develop a new work, 9 Days Falling, with New York playwright Mac Wellman. She has been awarded a British Council Realise Your Dreams grant for 2010.

George Megalogenis has thirty years’ experience in the media, including over a decade in the federal parliamentary press gallery. His book The Australian Moment won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction ...

Catherine Deveny has been a comedian, writer and professional speaker for 23 years.

She’s the author of seven books and over 1,000 columns for the Age newspaper, and is an ABC regular. She has appeared on Q&A five times — sitting next to John Elliott, Tony Abbott, Corey Bernardi, Peter Dutton and Archbishop Peter Jensen.

Deveny has performed five one-woman shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and has been named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Melbournians. Her charity and activist work includes public schools, public housing, feminism, atheism, asylum seekers, child abuse in the Catholic Church and homelessness.

She’s a keen commuter cycling ambassador and the co-founder of Pushy Women. She is the creator of the enormously successful Gunnas Writing Masterclasss — running 50 classes in less than 18 months. 

You’ll find her performing everywhere from debates at Melbourne Town Hall with Julian Burnside to Splendor In the Grass in Byron Bay.

She has never married and lives with her childhood sweetheart in the People's Republic Of Moreland.

Alan Brough was born in New Zealand and is quite a bit older than he'd like to be. Alan has always loved books and, from an early age, wanted to be a writer. Then he and his Dad went to see Star Wars and Alan decided that, actually, he really, really, really, really, really wanted to be an actor.

After having been an actor for a while Alan realised there wasn't that much work for a 6'4" guy with a slightly lopsided face and thick curly hair so he tried his hand at directing, broadcasting, composing, dancing (true!), singing and, in an unexpected turn of events, being a professional music nerd.

Recently, he got around to being a writer.

One day he hopes to have a bio that includes phrases like 'bestselling', 'award-winning' and 'so successful that he recently bought a solid gold toilet' but, until then, he's just happy to look at his copy of Charlie and the War Against the Grannies and think: 'Cool! I wrote a book!'