Hear My Eyes - Terminator 2: Judgment Day review | Arts Centre Melbourne

It’s been roughly 20 years since I last watched Terminator 2. And it's been a decade since I last stepped into a Hear My Eyes presentation, back when they paired Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats with an amazing live score by Melbourne’s GL. Both unforgettable. Both somehow left sitting in the “I need to revisit that” pile. Well, consider that rectified. Hear My Eyes have resurrected Terminator 2 and strapped it to a live, pulse-rattling score by Belgian electronic heavyweight Peter Van Hoesen. What this evening offers isn't just a rewatch, it’s a complete sensory overhaul. It's a blockbuster icon colliding with brooding, atmospheric techno. Propelled by electronic sound and framed by a laser show, it gives the film a new intensity and presence.

Terminator 2 is a classic, but this isn’t about revisiting it, it’s about the experience Hear My Eyes have built around it, starting with the music. Van Hoesen brings over four decades of expertise to the performance. Generally a solo artist, for this event he is joined by the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) Synthesiser Ensemble, gathered around a purpose-built liquid metal style table, where they, alongside lighting artist Robin Fox, perform and shape the sound and light in real time.

2025 My Melbourne Arts Awards

For twelve years now, I’ve been publishing my favourite theatre of the year. It started as a simple best-of list and slowly became my ritual, part celebration, part love letter to the Melbourne theatre scene. But for 2025, I’m shaking it up! :)

Instead of crowning just one “best show”, this year I’m recognising the people behind the work. The directors, performers, writers, designers, and creative forces who made this year what it was. Fourteen categories, because the performing arts is never just one thing, and neither is excellence. (In retrospect, there's other categories I should have considered - namely Best Clown, Best Cabaret Artist, Best Dancer and Best Experimental - and will consider these for inclusion in the 2026 MMA Awards.)

I say some version of this every year, because it never stops being true. The shows that stay with you longest are not always the big, glossy productions with a marketing budget and recognisable names. Sometimes it’s the little show that ran for four nights and played to ten people that absolutely wrecks you. Support independent theatre makers and venues. Some tickets cost less than $30 and can deliver the most original, daring, and affecting work you’ll see all year.

There’s already plenty to be excited about in 2026. Take a risk. See something you’ve never heard of. Walk into a space you’ve never been to. Melbourne theatre thrives on curiosity, and these awards exist to celebrate exactly that.

And with that, here are the nominees and winners in the 2025 My Melbourne Arts Awards:

Scream Star review | Speaker Percussion | Arts House

Worlds collide in Speak Percussion's new collaborative performance, Scream Star, where three artists from around the globe have come together with three pieces of live music that intersect sound, the moving image and percussion. London-based Matthew Shlomowitz, German Johannes Kreidler and New Yorker Jessie Marino present unique compositions that investigate the playfulness and creativity of sound and music exploration.

The opener by Shlomowitz is an imagined variety show called Hey Hey It’s Tuesday. Archival footage of people lining up for shows, on stage, backstage and everything in between is projected onto a screen as the composers play with a number of percussion instruments including cymbals, drums and xylophones. Through this, we discover  ways of how the moving image can interact with new sounds and to appreciate new ways of hearing sound. The segment involving the Kiama Blowhole, the largest in the world, is a particular highlight.

Flux Job review

The world premiere of Lucy Guerin Inc.'s Flux Job is an enthralling piece where four dancers navigate the personal and the shared experience of going through a traumatic event. Created during the Melbourne lockdowns as a response to the pandemic, while not explicitly referring to it, the piece provides an opportunity for the audience to consider how we have changed and how we can come together in this strange new world we are living in.

The collaboration with Flux Job is evident with its design team consisting of Paul Lim's lighting, Andrew Treloar's vibrantly flowing sheer fabric costumes and Jethro Woodward's sound completely supporting each other. Along with Adena Jacobs' dramaturgy in the scripted word portion, and the choreography, the purpose of the show and the thoughts raised in it are fully fleshed out, giving us plenty to think about.

Tree of Codes - Melbourne Festival review

When choreographer Wayne McGregor, composer Jamie XX, and visual artist Olafur Eliasson come together for a new contemporary dance production, expectations are high. Taking inspiration from Jonathan Safran Foer's 2010 book, Tree of Codes, this production of the same name is a stunning collaboration of movement, lighting, sound, and stage design.

Interestingly, Foer's book was inspired by another book, Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, a collection of short stories of a merchant family in a small town. Schulz story is full of metaphors, mythology and a blurring of fantasy and reality, and for his book, Foer cut out a large number of words and sentences from Schulz's stories and re-arranged them to form new stories and ideas. Even the title itself is made up of the letters from Schulz's book title.

Backbone review | Melbourne Festival | Arts Centre Melbourne

Just when you think you've seen all that is possible in circus, along comes Backbone (by Adelaide company Gravity and Other Myths) that makes you think again. Presented as part of the Melbourne Festival, this show examines the need of strength and support from those around us, and a need to be able to come together as a unified front if we are to ever succeed in life wonderfully represented through some mind-boggling acrobatics.

There's a strong ritualistic aesthetic in Backbone as the performers pour buckets of sand early in the show onto the stage in varying patterns. They begin to move left to right across the floor in a repetitive rite of passage while executing captivating twists, flips, balances, jumps and turns that I've never witnessed before. These bodies are doing things that should be physically impossible and it's baffling as to how they keep their energy and momentum going for the entire 75 minutes. 

The strength, teamwork, flexibility and trust that lies within this troupe (Martin Schreiber, Lachlan Binns, Jascha Boyce, Jacob Randell, Lewie West, Lewis Rankin, Joanne Curry, Mieke Lizotte, Lachlan Harper, Jackson Manson) is clearly evident, as bodies are thrown from one side of the stage and caught on the other and three person human towers are constructed. Boyce's hypnotic suit and rock act has her fixing her sight out towards the audience, remaining expressionless throughout her act so even as she stands precariously on the shoulders of one performer and being passed to another, her eyes stay locked and she remains calm, knowing everything will go according to plan.

The Dark Chorus review | Lucy Guerin | Meat Market

You don't notice it as you first enter the Meat Market, but then a shadow catches your eye and you stop and take a second glance. And it's then you see a figure cloaked in a black gown, head down slowly walking in the darkness around a circle of light. And then you see another, and another, and another, until it’s all you can see, and you wonder how you didn't see them in the first place, which is the perfect way to describe the thoughts and themes explored in Lucy Guerin's brilliant dance work, The Dark Chorus.

Presented as part of Melbourne Festival, the show is an intimate look at the darker thoughts and voices in our heads and how they can consume us. Throughout the performance, The Dark Chorus can be heard whispering and chanting and while you can only make out some of what is being said, feelings of dread and fear slowly seep inside you.