Our Mission

Music theatre is the most performed, attended and profitable theatrical form in the world. As a cultural practice, it inspires a degree of belonging and enthusiasm rivalled only by popular music. We bring together researchers, practitioners, and professionals in the field of music theatre to increase understanding and advocacy for scholarship on this form in Australia. We conduct formal, structural, economic, aesthetic, ethical, political, social, and cultural investigations.

We Aim To:

  • 1.

    Provide a greater understanding of music theatre forms in their structural, aesthetic, and social manifestations;

  • 2.

    Bring greater cohesion to the study and practice of the form in Australia;

  • 3.

    Provide pathways for future development of music theatre companies, works, and performers;

  • 4.

    Increase communication between all participants at all levels of music theatre industries and institutions;

  • 5.

    Advocate to government and private interests for increased support and funding for music theatre in Australia.

  • 6.

    Provide platforms for music theatre researchers and performance practitioners to develop, discuss, collaborate and disseminate their work.

We acknowledge that traditional commercial musical theatre and operetta sit alongside alternative, experimental, and innovative forms as music theatre. All these traditions are central to the formal, structural, political, social, cultural and aesthetic concerns of the form. Dance and choreographed movement needs to be treated with similar open and inclusive indeterminacy. 

The definition of music theatre is a continuing investigation which affects and informs all aspects of the work of this Roundtable. We recognize that the boundaries of the field are essentially indeterminate and contested