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 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts

Richard Watts's Latest Articles

Emily Imeson, ‘Floating QLD Waratah turned Flame Tree Season,’ 2021 (detail), recycled timber, acrylic on canvas, thread, batik earth-stained cotton, 210 x 240cm. Courtesy of the artist. A photo of a forest-themed artwork, including a curved piece of wood which helps frame the image.
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Strong like the forest: how a regional gallery’s ecosystem connects artists and community

Guest curator Christine Willcocks discusses the environmental and creative themes behind the Grafton Regional Gallery exhibition, ‘True North: From the…

Richard Watts

Mar 5, 2025
Reuben Kaye is one of the visiting artists headlining the inaugural Darwin Comedy Festival. The orange-lit photo shows Kaye in profile, looking to the left and laughing manically. His face is immaculately made up and his hair is quiffed and coifed. Darwin Comedy Festival.

Celebrating laughter and growing local audiences at the Darwin Comedy Festival

The first-ever Darwin Comedy Festival opens this week; ArtsHub learns about the program and why the Festival was established.

Richard Watts

Mar 5, 2025
ArtsHub's sweekly On the Move column is an overview of Australian arts sector comings and goings. The photo depicts a person skipping rope at the beach, with the focus being their bare feet as they skip, the sand and the skipping rope itself.
News

On the move: latest arts sector appointments

Our weekly round-up of arts sector comings and goings across industries and artforms and from across the country.

Richard Watts

Mar 4, 2025
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.
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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.
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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
'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.
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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
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