All podcast episodes

Podcast

MQFF, Dominic Kavanagh, Rhinoceros & Sydney Festival 2025

Buckle in for another ride of the SmartArts-coaster! Richard Watts OAM, is here to guide you through all the twists, turns and thrills of this weeks episode…

Kicking off with a Melbourne Queer…

Podcast

An Evening with Stephen Fry! Irish Film Festival, Adam Elliot, Victorian Opera 2025, The Rabble’s Wake AND Golden Blood

This week on SmartArts with Richard Watts,

As we all know, Melbourne is the most Irish city in Australia, and Dr Enda Murray, the Festival Director of the 2024 Irish Film Festival is…

Podcast

Malthouse 2025, Amanda Haskard on ACMI, plus MELBOURNE FRINGE MINI SPECIAL: Alix Kuijpers' Grim Grinning Ghosts, Mitch Jones' Apocrypha and choreographer Oli Mathiesen

Richard starts off this week's show with a Malthouse Theatre 2025 season overview with Artistic Director Matt Lutton.

Gunai/Kurnai woman and curator Amanda Haskard talks ACMI's major exhibition The Future and Other Fictions

Podcast

Poster Protest Art, The Cost of Living & Mother

Richard Watts is joined by Director Anthea Williams and Actor Rachael Edmonds to talk about upcoming Melbourne Theatre production "The cost of Living" which won the 2018 Pulitzer prize for drama, written by…

Podcast

Disability advocacy in the arts, MAGMA exhibitions, PURE oil paintings, You're the Man and Around the World in 80 Days.

Richard is joined in today's show of Smartarts by a whirlpool of talent including: artist Cindy Campbell, Sharmini Kumar & Arthur Pontonio of Around the World in 80 Days and Paul Mitchell &amp…

Podcast

And This Time the Well Is Alive, Secret Mall Apartment, Frankenstein, Stephen Cummins Retrospective and the Clyde Chabot Trilogy

Richard Watts OAM has a plentiful basket of curators, directors, artists and critics for you to choose from this week.

If you’re looking for an art exhibition, and perhaps you’ve been chewed up…

Podcast

Drawn Out Comics, Fox Galleries, the heart whispers and whirls, Asia TOPA, MIFF and AG Founder Andrew Gyopar

Richard is joined by a whole slew of guests including: Bernard Caleo to talk all things comics, Tai Snaith with the fortnightly Art Attack, Nela Trifkovic who is the vocalist behind new performance…

Podcast

Irish rappers KNEECAP, Circus Arts, SCI-FI Exhibitions & National Poetry Month

Richard Kicks off this jam packed episode with Simona Jobbagy of NICA and Sam Jacob, CEO of Collarts as they talk about Australia's only Bachelor of Circus Arts finding a new home for…

Podcast

Scandinavian Film Festival, How do we remain; at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Ānanda: Dance of Joy and Two Remain.

Host Richard Watts is joined by Christof Wehmeier, head of international & festival promotion at the Icelandic Film Centre, and they discuss the 2024 Scandinavian film Festival program and highlights.

We also have…

Podcast

Midsumma needs a new home, Tristan Meecham's Queering the Collection, Melbourne Art Fair's New Director, Romeo & Julie plus movie turned opera, Breaking the Waves

Richard Watts OAM reporting for SmartArts! As always, he's here to give you an inside look into the fabulous people behind all of the brilliant goings-on of Naarm's flourishing art scene. Let's go!

Podcast

Redeveloping the Melbourne Arts Precinct, reviving Three Magpies in A Tree, Artist Kate Wallace, La Belle Epoque and Reclaim the Crone

SmartArts with Richard Watts OAM back to keep you company on these chilly winters days...

Starting out with Artist Kate Wallace on her new exhibition ‘Details of a room and other places’ -…

Podcast

A Streetcar Named Desire, art partners, Jon & Jero and Abby Howells

Richard Watts OAM (!!!) is back in the studio after taking a mental health reset. He’s back, and he’s got the best of Melbourne’s performance, art and comedy for you to fill your…

Podcast

Thirty Years of APHIDS, Young Broadway Actors Chat Shrek & Opening Up Melbourne

Steph Teitelbaum fills in for Richard Watts this week for chats with Lara Thoms, the Executive Director of experimental theatre collective APHIDS about their 30th birthday; Young Australian Broadway Chorus talent James Pringle…

Podcast

A scent-sual play, a sensual play, a sense-ual play and 50 years of Art Access Victoria

For one week more, Oliver Coleman keeps the seat nice and toasty for resident SmartArts host, Richard Watts. And what a cracking show to end the run!

Writer Georgia Ketals & scent artist…

Podcast

Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion, Lucy Guerin Inc and run away to the NICA Circus

Back to fill the enormous SmartArts shoes of Richard Watts OAM is resident funny guy, Oliver Coleman.

Kicking off the show is Tai Smith with the latest visual arts reccs - think cutesy…

Podcast

MIFF 2024, CLIPPEDKilda and Blackout Songs

Welcome back to another instalment of SmartArts! Oliver Coleman is steering the ship for you again and boy are we in for a cruisy ride...

First up, CLIPPED music video festival director Samuel…

Podcast

The Shannon Michael Cane celebration, Michelle Hamer's 'I'm A Believer' and Arkadia, a dance opera

Oliver Coleman takes the SmartArts seat this week, and he’s keeping it toasty for the next few weeks while Richard is on break.

Tai Snaith comes in for Art Attack to talk all…

Podcast

The Odd Couple, Beings, Cutting through Time, and Comedy In The West

Oslo Davis fills in for Richard Watts for a jam packed show. Oslo chats with Mark Kilmurry, the Director of Neil Simon's 'The Odd Couple' at the Comedy Theatre, and John Gethin Lewis…

Podcast

Hold Me Closer Tony Danza, The Huxleys, Arts Wellbeing Collective's Navigate Well Resources

This week, Dan & Steph Teitelbaum take the SmartArts reins and gallop effortlessly into another episode... this episode (as always) is jampacked with recommendations, artist deep dives and what's coming up in Melbourne's…

Podcast

Pia Johnson’s Re-Orient, Possum Magic and a couple of funny guys

It’s that time of year again… Melbourne International Comedy Festival! You can’t escape it… so let’s embrace it, with two fabulous comics joining Richard on the program. But he's got art and theatre…

Podcast

Arts Project Australia, State of Australian Regions Report, Akaraka and Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons!

Join Richard Watts in the studio with Liz Knowles, the new Executive Director of Arts Project Australia about their upcoming 50th Anniversary, Tai Snaith for the fortnightly review of current Melbourne exhibitions, and…

Podcast

Palestinian Film Festival 2024, The Mary Wallopers, Dungeons & Dragons 50th anniversary, PHOTO 2024, and theatre theatre theatre!

Richard kicks off this week’s epic show with Irish band, The Mary Wallopers. The cheeky, rowing brothers, Charles and Andrew Hendy, talk sibling rivalry, genre shifting, and their anticipation of Ireland’s global domination…

Podcast

Yentl, Counting and Cracking, When We Were Young, Back to Back and Not Natural!

Richard Watts is back in the studio to chat to director Gary Abrahams and actress Evelyn Krape on the production of Yentl, an adaptation of a Yiddish short story.

Plus, S.Shakthidharan, the…

Podcast

Rock Musicals, Northern Irish Chavs, and 7 Hours of Theatre

Jess McEvoy talks about their solo rock musical, 'The Show,' and the way that the show came about naturally after years of performing as a singer-songwriter between Naarm and New York City.

Sandrine…

Podcast

Celebrating local artists, program releases, cabaret, and a Broadcast Birthday!

SmartArts' 19th birthday was celebrated on the day of broadcast (December 14, 2023), which was also Richard's last show for 2023!

Richard is joined by Liam James, Deputy Director of Linden New Art…

Podcast

Marshmallow Lasers, Robot Painting Dogs & the 2024 Sydney Festival

Artist Agnieszka Pilat on her optimism towards AI in art and walking Richard Watts through the process of training three robot dogs to oil paint, for her new exhibition at the NGV Triennial…

Podcast

Exploring “Place”: 56 Printmakers Connect with Country & the Friendships Built Liberating Homelands

Writer and director Glenn Shea on his unabashed new play ‘MI: WI 3027,’ unpacking the unlikely friendship between an Indigenous soldier and a Jewish-German ethnologist and prisoner of war, as they bond over…

Podcast

Triennials, the Legacy of Blade Runner, the Resilience of Women and the Art of Waacking

Ewan McEoin, the Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, NGV and lead curator on Triennial for a NGV Triennial overview chat; Primal Screen’s Flick Ford &  Zero G’s Rob Jan talking…

Podcast

Performance Art Mania & Remembering Ukraine

Ruth McKenzie, Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival gives an overview of the exciting new festival program; Dynamic duo, choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer Robin Fox astonish Richard with their exhilarating performance art piece…

Podcast

Dumplings, Dodgeball and Dancing 'In the Club'

Ania Reynolds & Alisa Tanaka-King join Richard to talk about their show 'Dumplings Darling' and their approach to cultural sharing; being un-pretentious and inclusionary, using the cultural cross-section that is made up of…

Podcast

Sci-Fi Superheros Fighting Diabetes & Lighting up Laneways with Glowing Comics

Writer and performer Candy Bowers reveals the horrors of type 2 diabetes and its disproportionate effect on Black communities, in her afro-futuristic, genre-bending show, ‘Sweet Mama’; Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, AO, On her composition…

Podcast

Insomniac Mixtapes, Art Fairs and Photography at the NGV

Artist Telia Nevile on her new one-woman cabaret performance ‘Insomniac Mixtape’ at Melbourne Fringe Festival, capturing the unsettling and relatable descent into chaos that is sleep deprivation, through a range of bizarre goth…

Podcast

Festival Frenzy: Irish Films, Fringe and Melbourne Jazz

Irish Film Festival Director Dr Enda Murray walks listeners through the exciting 2023 program overview for the Irish Film Festival; Program Director Hadley Agrez unveils the diverse 2023 Melbourne International Jazz Festival lineup…

Podcast

Queer Bushrangers and the Brand New Merribek Festival

Co-producers Tim Sneddon and Jeff Achtem explain how accessibility and the need for low-cost family festivals drove them to create the new Merribek Family Festival, walking listeners through their exciting program; Nina Sanadze…

Podcast

The Art Inspired by Being Struck by Lightning, and the 41st Melbourne Fringe Festival

Composer and cellist Zoë Barry on how her unlikely experience of being struck by lightning on three separate occasions inspired her new artistic work in ‘The Nervous Atmosphere’ at Arts House; Simon Abrahams…

Podcast

Radiothon 2023

It's Radiothon time here at Triple R - the time of the year we ask our listeners to help support SmartArts and all the other programs on RRR by financially supporting the station…

Podcast

Breaking the Conventions of Theatre with Pony Cam

Contemporary theatre performers Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams of Pony Cam exhibit the process of knowledge sharing across generations, breaking theatre convention by collaborating with mass community-led ensemble cast of locals aged 55+…

Podcast

Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism

Director Nick Kozakis talks how his childhood horror movie obsession and the resurgence of the horror film genre in Australia influenced his new independent horror, ‘Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism’; CEO and creative director…

Podcast

Road-tripping with two queer alien Elvises & ‘The Fence’

Richard is away this week, guest host Daniel Santangeli fills in! Playwright Fleur Murphy explores ordinary acts of bravery and the ethical concerns of witnessing domestic violence in her award-winning play ‘The Fence,’…

Podcast

Gail Mabo’s ‘Current’ & Swinburne Circus Art students face uncertainty

First Nations artist Gail Mabo talks shouldering the legacy of her father, activist Eddie Mabo, and her new exhibition ‘Current’ at McClelland Gallery with fellow First Nations artists Lisa Wuap and Dominic White…