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ABC News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Theatre Jobs
JACK EVANS, REPORTER: It's not every day you get to see what goes on behind the scenes of a big theatre production. Unless, of course, you work behind the scenes of a big theatre production. Either way, I'm here to find out what happens on and off stage of the Australian production of Beauty and the Beast. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST MUSICAL: Be our guest, be our guest. Our command is your request. There are hundreds of people doing all sorts of jobs to make a show like this come to life. But let's start with perhaps the more obvious, the actors themselves. BRENDAN XAVIER, ACTOR: My name is Brendan Xavier and I play the Beast. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST MUSICAL: No pain could be deeper. SHUBSHRI KANDIAH, ACTOR: My name is Shubshri Kandiah and I play Belle. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST MUSICAL: And I... ROHAN BROWNE, ACTOR: Hi My name is Ron Brown, I play Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. How did you get the role of Lumiere? ROHAN BROWNE: I auditioned like anybody else. You know, I've been in this industry for 27 years and you know it, it doesn't, you know, your resume counts for a lot. But you still have to prove yourself in the room every time. BRENDAN XAVIER: I didn't really know where I'd fit in the show. But I, I knew that I I wanted to be a part of it. But then I auditioned anyway and then it turned out to be the right choice. Once the shows been cast, it's time for rehearsals. BRENDAN XAVIER: Well, it's a little over a month. Then we sort of workshop the show, we talk about the characters, we talk about the intentions of every scene. ROHAN BROWNE: We go into the process, I mean you know, you learn the script, you read through it, you kind of try and get an understanding of your character and your version of that character because you don't want to replicate what somebody else has done. SHUBSHRI KANDIAH: I think my favourite thing about what I do is getting to pick apart a character and kind of get to perform it, but feel like every night I get to try and make it that little bit better. As for backstage, well that's a whole other show. SHUBSHRI KANDIAH: If you think there are a lot of people on stage, there's like three times the amount of people backstage kind of making sure that the show runs as smoothly as it does. Speaking of, let's go meet some of them. Starting with Benjamin Osborne, the Resident Director. BENJAMIN OSBORNE, RESIDENT DIRECTOR: So my job is being the eyes for our director in New York here in Australia. And so that entails a lot, that is maintaining the show on a day-to-day basis. And just making sure the production is as it was on opening night in Sydney 2 years ago. In a similar role is Emma Dominico-Smith the Resident Choreographer. EMMA DOMINICO-SMITH, RESIDENT CHOREOGRAPHER: So I started as a dancer. And with that, I just fell in love with looking at the technique of how dancers perform on stage and then maintaining it sort of just came from, I had a, I guess, a good eye. So when the show's happening, usually I'm out front watching and I note the shows. So every time there's a dance routine on I look for different things in that. If there's mistakes or if there's people not doing things correctly that needs to be fixed I note take that. Meanwhile Luke Hunter is the Musical Director. LUKE HUNTER, MUSIC DIRECTOR: If you go and see a musical and often the orchestra or the band are living in the orchestra pit, down in the hole in the front of the stage, you often might see the back of someone's head and their arms waving around with a stick. You know, that's me. That's you! LUKE HUNTER: So I'm conducting the orchestra most shows of the week. There are also a lot of people working to make sure the actors look the part. Like Sophie Webber who is the Deputy Head of Wardrobe. That's the Beast, that's the Beast costume. SOPHIE WEBBER, DEPUTY HEAD OF WARDROBE: Our job is to look after the costumes. The day-to-day washing, laundering as well as the changes that happen with all the performers during the show. And making everyone look pretty basically and comfortable and able to perform. Then you have Emily Griffiths, who is Deputy Head of WHAM! EMILY GRIFFITHS, DEPUTY HEARD OF HAIR & MAKEUP: So WHAM is what we call wigs, hair and makeup. In our building it's just more, more fun to be like we're in WHAM, you know. So we come in and we do some maintenance on the wigs, we might need to like redress something. And so that's usually like a few hours before the hour call for the show and then we go into the hour where we each have like a plot that we do helping out, like the cast, the principles, that kind of thing. So how does a piece like this get onto the stage? TROY LEENARDS, PRODUCTION TECHNICAL SWING: So this one we call the castle stairs... Backstage there are also a stack of technical roles, like Troy Leenards who is the Production Technical Swing. TROY LEENARDS: It's not a very well known position. But the way I like to think of it is I'm kind of like an understudy for all the crew roles that we need to make the show happen every night. So if somebody's sick or they're away on holiday, I can jump into cover their show responsibilities, so that the show goes on. Sounds like a very important job. TROY LEENARDS: Yeah, it can be a very stressful job. Speaking of stressful jobs, it's up to the Stage Manager, Grace Benn, to make sure all the different moving parts of the production happen. GRACE BENN, DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER: What we do is we basically facilitate the creatives needs, which is a fancy way of saying that we make the show look how it should every night. One of the many things on the show we do is we call from what we call the calling desk. So we watch the show every single night. So if you see like a bit of lighting change or if you see a set piece move, if you see sound change or anything like that, like any of those things that you see change on the stage that's technical. It's kind of like conducting the technical parts of a show basically, yeah. LIAM McEWEN, HEAD OF SOUND: My principal inputs, my female ensemble and my male ensemble... One of the many people Grace communicates with is Liam McEwen, the Head of Sound. LIAM McEWEN, HEAD OF SOUND My job is out here to maintain the sound design and mix the show as the primary operator. I have two other operators who come out, big part of my job is quality control with them. Do you, if you don't like someone, are you just like turn down. LIAM McEWEN: No, that's not my job. And So what advice would you have for a young person watching this who wants to be doing what you're doing? LIAM McEWEN: Be persistent. The, the, this, this getting, particularly getting out to say on on a console can take time. Like a lot of people think this is where you start, this is this is the end game. With everybody and with a lot of the other departments you'll start by helping with set up, pack down but be pleasant be and be persistent. ROHAN BROWNE: Stand out, be unique, be different. Go and train. Listen to everybody. Take on all of the information and absorb it all because we are shards of everything that we've learned over time. BRENDAN XAVIER: There's no one way to come into this industry. There's no one way to find where you fit in this job. SHUBSHRI KANDIAH: Some advice that I have is just get involved in as much as you possibly can. Take every opportunity to learn to work with different people, to hear about what their jobs are maybe in the industry, even if it's not what you want to do, I think the knowledge of like how the industry works as a whole is really interesting and it's important to know about. It sure does take a village, doesn't it? SHUBSHRI KANDIAH: It really does, yeah. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST MUSICAL: Gaston, Gaston! Gaston, hey!
Perth Now
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Disney musical reimagining ready to wow Perth
No one could have foreseen musical theatre performer Rohan Browne's moment on a lamppost as Don Lockwood in the Australian production of Singin' In The Rain as a precursor to his current illuminating role in Beauty And The Beast. Yet Browne's current undertaking as the world's most famous talking candelabra Lumiere is not his first brush with the Disney musical, based on the company's groundbreaking 1991 animated film. With a background in ballet, Browne was a teenager studying at Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School when seeing the original Australian Beauty And The Beast production multiple times in 1995 — starring Rachel Beck, Michael Cormick, Hugh Jackman and Bert Newton — made him more determined than ever to pursue a career in musical theatre. Your local paper, whenever you want it. 'If you've seen the cartoon, the original iteration of Lumiere was the fun, funny light in the castle who also gets to do a big number,' 45-year-old Browne says from his home in Melbourne. 'Aside from the title number, Be Our Guest is the big kind of showstopper, so there's a lot of pressure to really reach those heights, and I've put my own spin on it, as any actor does. They want to come at it with fresh eyes.' Gareth Jacobs, Hayley Martin, Shubshri Kandiah, Rohan Browne and the company of Disney's Beauty And The Beast the Musical perform Be Our Guest. Credit: Daniel Boud Browne's performance of Be Our Guest includes an extended dance break from the original stage production, taking it to a pulse-racing 11-minute extravaganza. 'It's Disney. They don't do things by halves, do they?' he laughs. 'It's pretty amazing to lead that number. It's a challenge. I don't ever rest on my laurels. I never get used to it. There's always something to work on or improve or find other little moments in it, even though we've been doing it for coming up to two years. 'That number aside, there's also the sentimental moments that we have of really trying to get the Beast to understand that this is our last chance before the curse really takes hold of us, this is his last opportunity… I really kind of see Lumiere as kind of the Beast or the Prince's fun uncle — the one who he kind of looks to because Cogsworth is too fuddy-duddy and strict.' Beauty And The Beast's Rohan Browne. Credit: Supplied Beauty And The Beast was the first Disney film adapted as a Broadway musical in 1994, this tale as old as time featuring the animation's original music by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, with additional lyrics by Tim Rice. 'When director and choreographer Matt West talks about him going to Disney and being like 'This is the perfect thing to start Disney Theatrical', it really is,' Browne says. 'It's got this beautiful heroine; a strong, powerful woman who stands in her power and stands in her truth, which was the antithesis of anything else that they'd really kind of done.' While the production still has all that old-school live musical magic, Browne believes the updated technology used throughout this reimagined Australian version, which premiered at Sydney's Capitol Theatre in June 2023, is rather spectacular. Rohan Browne as Lumiere in Disney's Beauty And The Beast. Credit: Ben King 'It's nostalgic for the older generation who have seen it before, but for new theatre-goers, or people who haven't seen the show before, they're going to be wowed,' Browne says. 'You hear a lot of gasping when certain elements happen, like when the Prince transforms into the Beast in the prologue and when he transforms from the Beast back to the Prince. How Chip comes on stage, how all of the trickery happens in Gaston and how Be Our Guest just keeps going and going. All of these incredible theatrical elements are thrown out there.' Without wanting to wax lyrical, Browne says he is loving his time on the Beauty And The Beast stage, not only as part of the musical's legacy but also for what it has meant to his family, particularly his four-year-old Duke. 'He still hasn't managed to be able to sit through the whole show because he gets scared of the Beast,' Browne says of his son with wife and fellow musical theatre performer Christie Whelan Browne. 'But he'll watch the Be Our Guest performance we did for Sunrise 15 times a day. I think he knows it better than I do.' Beauty And The Beast is at Crown Theatre Perth from July 24. Tickets at
