The striking image on the cover of the August 2022 issue of Limelight features proud Trawlwoolway man David mangenner Gough, performing on the Burnie foreshore as part of mapali – Dawn Gathering at the 2021 Ten Days on the Island festival, directed by Lindy Hume.

Cover of Limelight’s August 2022 issue

Hume has written this month’s in-depth cover story Big Ideas from Small Places, in which she discusses the surge in hyper-local and socially engaged creativity that happened during COVID and asks if the time has come to reevaluate Australian culture through a regional lens.

Ella Togo, Logan Adams and Sean Sambo taking photographs on Country as part of a Big hART program. Photo © Claire Leach

Learning music as a child has untold benefits, yet music education is currently contracting in Australia. In an opinion piece called A Gift for Life, Anita Collins explores the many ways you can invest in music education across a number of different schools and the profound impact that it can have for each and every student.

Dr Anita Collins with students from Canberra Grammar School. Photo © William Hall

In an unusual twist of fate, there are two stage adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde running concurrently in Sydney during August – and they could hardly be more different. At Sydney Theatre Company, Kip Williams is directing his own new adaptation for two actors, Ewen Leslie and Matthew Backer. Working with the same creative team behind the STC’s smash hit The Picture of Dorian Gray, it will include live video.

An illustration by Edmund J. Sullivan from a 1928 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Image: World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Meanwhile, Hayden Tee is directing a radical take on Frank Wildhorn’s musical Jekyll and Hyde for Hayes Theatre Co. In her feature Hyde and Seek, Deborah Jones looks at how Stevenson’s novella quickly made its way into the public consciousness, becoming a powerful image for the split between good and evil, and how these two productions are replacing that simplistic dichotomy with something far more complex.

In our final feature, The Death of Beauty? New York-based writer Ilario Colli, author of the book In Art as in Life, explores the idea that in the postmodern aesthetic, beauty is, to all intents and purposes, dead. But, he argues, it is there waiting to be resurrected and should be returned to its place at the centre of our creative and artistic lives.

Sisyphus in an oil painting by Titian, 1548–49, in the Prado Museum, Madrid. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Elsewhere in the magazine, we interview soprano Ali McGregor about The Call, the new opera she conceived after hearing a story on the podcast The Moth. In September, McGregor will star in Opera Queensland’s world premiere of this solo work, featuring a score by Connor D’Netto and Kate Miller-Heidke and a libretto by Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall.

This month’s Cutting Edge looks at Speak Percussion in Melbourne and its new production Scream Star. Our Playing Up column features Australian-born Andrew Bain, Principal Horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, who returns home in August to perform with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and the Australian World Orchestra. Louise Bezzina, the Artistic Director of the Brisbane Festival, is the subject of this month’s My Music column, while Emma Jayakumar answers Five Questions about her new song cycle, Four Lost Songs, which will be premiered by the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and Rachelle Durkin as part of the Darwin Festival.

Inspired by a text from his daughter, Guy Noble ponders how comforting (and amusing) it would be to be an emotional support animal or person on stage in this month’s Soapbox, while in Sacred Cow, Chris Lloyd suggests that the solution to the never-ending debate about when (and when not) to applaud at classical music concerts is to ban applause altogether. Lynden Barber reviews the film The Forgiven and Brett Allen-Bayes reviews Susan Tomes’ new book The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces.

As usual, there’s plenty more besides, including Clive Paget’s column On the Record about the latest recordings, our On Stage listings and digital streaming guides. Happy reading!

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