Richard Watts

Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in early 2020. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association in 2021, and a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Photo: Fiona Hamilton. Follow Richard on Bluesky @richardthewatts.bsky.social and Instagram @richard.l.watts

Richard Watts's Latest Articles

Sebastian Geilings, Yilin Kong and Patrick O'Luanaigh from ADT's 'A Quiet Language'.
Features

Turning 60 in style: Australian Dance Theatre leaps from the stage to the gallery wall

AD Daniel Riley describes the birth of ADT and an accompanying exhibition documenting the company’s six decades of dance-making.

Richard Watts

Mar 3, 2025
Irish actor Stephen Rea in Samuel Beckett's 'Krapp's Last Tape' at Adelaide Festival 2025. The photograph depicts Rea, an older fair-skinned man with an unruly shock of greying hair, hunched over an old reel-to-reel tape deck to which he listens anxiously.
StarsStarsStarsStarsStars

Theatre review: Krapp’s Last Tape with Stephen Rea, Adelaide Festival 2025

A masterful actor performs Beckett’s masterpiece about the inevitable march of time: an unmissable production.

Richard Watts

Mar 2, 2025
Sebastian Geilings in Australian Dance Theatre's 'A Quiet Language', Adelaide Festival 2025.
StarsStarsStarsStarsStars

Dance review: A Quiet Language, Australian Dance Theatre, Adelaide Festival 2025

A complex, compelling production, by turns anguished and joyous, angry and elegiac, honouring six decades of radical dance history.

Richard Watts

Mar 2, 2025
South Australian Greens Senator and arts spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young, centre, together with L-R: Katie McCusker, the Greens candidate for Sturt and the Greens candidate for the Federal seat of Adelaide, Mat Monti. Photo: Supplied.
News

Australian Greens launch new arts policy, make explosive allegations regarding Creative Australia’s CEO

Creative Australia’s CEO Adrian Collette "misled" the Senate Estimates hearing last Tuesday according to the Greens’ arts spokesperson Senator Sarah…

Richard Watts

Feb 28, 2025
Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette AM. A middle-aged, fair-skinned man with a shaved head, and wearing glasses and a blue suit, smiles at the camera.
News

Australian Pavilion may be empty at Venice 2026; no resignations forthcoming

CEO Adrian Collette and Board Chair Robert Morgan will not be resigning, despite the damage caused by Creative Australia’s abrupt…

Richard Watts

Feb 26, 2025
On the Move is ArtsHub's weekly wrap of the Australian arts sector's appointments and resignations. The photo shows a male dancer dancing en pointe.
News

On the move: latest arts sector appointments

Our weekly round-up of Australian arts sector appointments and resignations from across the country.

Richard Watts

Feb 25, 2025
Gravity and Other Myths' 'The Mirror' at Gluttony, Adelaide Fringe 2025. Two circus performers stand onstage, dramatically lit; one is balanced on his stomach on the other performer's head.
StarsStarsStarsStarsStars

Performance reviews: Gravity and Other Myths’ The Mirror, Sawdust, The LadyBoys of Bangkok, Adelaide Fringe 2025

A playful children’s circus show, a slickly performed Thai drag show and the latest production from local powerhouse Gravity and…

Richard Watts

Feb 24, 2025
'Garry Starr: Classic Penguins' at The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide Fringe 2025. A photoshopped image of a fair-skinned man with curly black hair and a neat beard wearing an orange-coloured Elizabethan ruff. His arms from the elbows down, and his body from the waist down, have been photoshopped to appear like a penguin. He leans on his left flipper and sits on his left penguin hip, his orange penguin feet and right flipper raised.
StarsStarsStarsStarsStars

Performance reviews: Garry Starr: Classic Penguins and Thunderstuck: A Night of Classic Rock, Adelaide Fringe 2025

From brilliant, in-your-face clowning to contemporary dance performed to a virtuosic live violin score of rock classics, two fascinating but…

Richard Watts

Feb 24, 2025
GRIT Productions' 'BITE' at The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide Fringe. A sex positive circus-burlesque-cabaret. The phto depicts a female-identitying performer pol-dancing, but the pole is untethered and the performer is using circus skills as as pole-dancing skills to create the scene.
StarsStarsStarsStarsStars

Cabaret review: Bite, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide Fringe

A queer 'spiegeltent style' cabaret celebrating sex positivity in the face of growing homophobic hate globally.

Richard Watts

Feb 22, 2025
Arts news watch is ArtsHub's summary of the week’s trending arts sector hot topics. A photo of a blue eye in a green and blue pained face.
News

Arts news watch: this week’s trending topics

Keep your eye on what’s happening in the sector with our weekly summary of the most-read arts news stories on…

Richard Watts

Feb 22, 2025
1 … 16 17 18 19 20 … 250
User Icon
Forgot password?
User Icon
Back to Login