Joanna Murray-Smith

And what else has happened? Saw Uncle Vanya.

Uncle Vanya, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Anne-Louise Sarks at the MTC.

Saw that and was pretty rigorously disappointed by it.

It wasn't without beauty, for sure.

Think what you want about Joanna Murray-Smith, but I think a tendency of hers...

In the last handful of years of her career, she really is partial to kind of like a rom-com energy.

And this was no exception, which is a disappointing thing to say about an adaptation of Uncle Vanya, which if it's going to get any sort of genre treatment, I don't feel like it needs to needs to belong to the same world as 27 Dress is.

Interesting tidbit.

Joanna Murray-Smith, the writer of the play, Australian, born

in Victoria.

So no connection to a woman

Today's episode features Sarah Goodes, an award-winning Australian theatre director known for championing new Australian work.

She has directed more than 20 new productions for major companies, including Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company, with recent highlights including Break of Day by Stevie Rogers for Malthouse Theatre, The Talented Mr Ripley for Sydney Theatre Company, Julia by Joanna Murray-Smith starring Justine Clark, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which sold out in Melbourne before touring to Sydney.

In 2025, she started Jacaranda Productions with actor-producer Diana Glenn after they met at AFTRS, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Their goal? To create multi-medium stories by finding ideas that start in theatre and developing them into TV, film and online productions, and vice versa.

And we were very interested in a company from England called Francesca Moody who, you know, was behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer where this idea is that you're an incubator for story and And then you find the right home for that story.

But we have a real focus on new Australian work and how we can be a part of the national conversation in a way.

You know, like when I did a play recently called Julia and it was written by Joanna Murray-Smith and it had Justine Clark in it and it was about the misogyny speech.

It was an incredibly successful play and production and extraordinary performance by Justine.