Top of page

Performances & Events

Site tools: Main Content

All


The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University is recognised as one of the top performing arts schools in the world. Entry to its courses is highly competitive and the many concerts and shows which are showcased throughout the year are produced in-house, with WAAPA students on stage, backstage and front of house.

I invite you to come and see the students in action. You will be impressed by their talent, enthusiasm and professionalism. By purchasing tickets you will be contributing directly to funding WAAPA's performance program and production costs.

Join us in 2013 - See the stars of tomorrow on stage today.

Director
Professor Julie Warn AM




Classical Tuesdays - Semester 1

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

A tasty Tuesday series of free classical lunchtime concerts featuring staff, students or visiting guests serving up sumptuous musical treats for hungry ears!

Opening night: 26th Feb 1:10pm   Closing night: 28th May 1:10pm

Moving Object

Dance performances at WA Academy of Performing Arts

LINK Dance Company presents Moving Object, an outstanding season of contemporary dance by emerging and established choreographers.

Opening night: 22nd May 7:30pm   Closing night: 25th May 2:00pm

Dido and Aeneas & La Serva e L'Ussero

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The first of the two chamber operas is the drama of Dido and her lover, Aeneas and is one of the most tragic of love stories - two lovers torn apart by the gods. The sublime music of Henry Purcell is as relevant today as it was in his time and the birth of opera in England in the 17th Century. The second is simply a playful drama, with a sentimental plot and a happy ending!

Opening night: 29th May 7:30pm   Closing night: 1st Jun 7:30pm

An Evening of Song

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

A potpouuri of favourite songs, arias and ensembles including the beautiful trio from Dvorak’s Rusalka, Rossini’s hilarious Cat duet and the divine quartet from the final scene of Little Women, the opera. Plus a few music theatre treasures for good measure.

Opening night: 6th Jun 7:30pm   Closing night: 6th Jun 7:30pm

Love and Money

Acting performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Funny but heart wrenching, this ingenious drama dares us to enter a dislocated world of bad debts and even worse desires.

Opening night: 14th Jun 7:30pm   Closing night: 20th Jun 7:30pm

Thoroughly Modern Millie

Music Theatre performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The Broadway sensation, based on the 1968 musical film, tells the story of a naive young woman who finds herself in the midst of a series of madcap adventures when she sets her sights on marrying her wealthy boss.

Opening night: 15th Jun 2:00pm   Closing night: 22nd Jun 7:30pm

As You Like It

Acting performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Deception, passion and intrigue abound as Rosalind and Celia flee death in the city to become refugees in the Forest of Arden where different terrors, delights and temptations lie in wait.

Opening night: 15th Jun 7:30pm   Closing night: 20th Jun 7:30pm

Western Australian Composers Project

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Decibel moves into the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts for two weeks of open rehearsals, artist talks and two concerts in the West End Space.

Opening night: 25th Jun   Closing night: 6th Jul

Classical Tuesdays - Semester 2

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

A tasty Tuesday series of free classical lunchtime concerts featuring staff, students or visiting guests serving up sumptuous musical treats for hungry ears!

Opening night: 30th Jul 1:10pm   Closing night: 29th Oct 1:10pm

The World of Gershwin

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Premiering in New York in 1924 to tumultuous applause, George Gershwin's classical-jazz concerto Rhapsody in Blue is enormously popular. Gershwin's 1928 tone poem An American in Paris evokes the energy, sights and sounds of Paris in the 1920s.

Opening night: 1st Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 1st Aug 7:30pm

WAAPA Open Day

Special events at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The WAAPA/ECU Open Day is a perfect opportunity to explore behind the scenes at one of the world’s foremost performing arts academies. See WAAPA students in action and speak with staff members about the range of course options.

Opening night: 11th Aug 10:00am   Closing night: 11th Aug 10:00am

ICMC | IDEA

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

ICMC | IDEA (International Developments in Electro Accoustics) showcases important international scholarly and artistic practices regarding the combination of computing, acoustic instruments and space.

Opening night: 12th Aug   Closing night: 16th Aug

International Computer Music Conference

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Decibel premieres a commission by Alvin Curran (USA) amongst other international works.

Opening night: 12th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 12th Aug 7:30pm

Rite of Passage

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Celebrating a unique cross-institutional collaborative composition, this will be the world premiere performance of a work for 'massed saxophones', entitled Rite of Passage.

Opening night: 15th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 15th Aug 7:30pm

Transcendental Voices

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Choral music that will inspire and uplift directed by one of Australia's most dynamic choral conductors. In the sumptuous acoustic of St Mary's Cathedral, Brett Weymark leads WAAPA's vocal students in a performance of Durufle's timeless Requiem.

Opening night: 16th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 16th Aug 7:30pm

Alison Wedding with the WAAPA Sextet

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Alison Wedding is one of New York's finest jazz vocalists. As a resident of Australia for nearly 10 years, Alison was lauded as one of "our" greatest jazz talents. Tonight she performs repertoire with the WAAPA sextet, arranged by WAAPA Jazz Coordinator, Jamie Oehlers.

Opening night: 22nd Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 22nd Aug 7:30pm

Fresh Ground

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Fresh Ground is a unique recital project that explores a number of interlocking performance approaches. Compositions will merge from traditional set works, improvised cadenzas, preludes and interludes toward more contemporary processed soundscapes and looped textural improvisations.

Opening night: 23rd Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 23rd Aug 7:30pm

Easy Virtue

Acting performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Bright Young Things clash with the sanctimoniously narrow-minded as Noel Coward takes aim at social prejudice and religious hypocrisy in his comedy of manners about an oppressive matriarch, whose rigorous, archaic and restricted conception of "virtue", leads her family down a path of destruction.

Opening night: 23rd Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 29th Aug 7:30pm

Assassins

Music Theatre performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

This revue-style musical lays bare the lives of nine individuals who assassinated, or tried to assassinate, the President of the United States. Bold, original, disturbing, and alarmingly funny, Assassins is one of the most important and controversial musicals ever written.

Opening night: 24th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 31st Aug 7:30pm

Fresh

Dance performances at WA Academy of Performing Arts

The graduating dancers showcase their prodigious choreographic talents in this selection of new dance works, performed by their peers.

Opening night: 27th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 31st Aug 2:00pm

The Art of Noises

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto The Art of Noises extols the joys of noise: "vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons, greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke".

Opening night: 29th Aug 7:30pm   Closing night: 29th Aug 7:30pm

Warana Concerto Comptetion

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Three student soloists battle it out for WAAPA's highest honour: the prestigious Warana Prize. Over the years this competition has seen its winners go on to exciting careers after graduation.

Opening night: 5th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 6th Sep 7:30pm

Viva La Guitarra

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Few instruments possess the popularity, flexibility, passion, and poetry of the Spanish guitar. Experience the authentic spirit of the guitar with music from Spain and Latin America, and beyond, performed by WAAPA staff (including Jonathan Paget and Craig Lake), Plectra ensemble, and talented WAAPA guitarists.

Opening night: 12th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 12th Sep 7:30pm

Radio Active

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Join the huge cast of talented young musicians and singers as they entertain you in a high- energy celebration of chart-toppers from performers who have shaped our modern musical tastes. There's something for everyone - from rock to pop, rhythm and blues to funk classics and soul. Radio Active rocks!

Opening night: 12th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 14th Sep 7:30pm

Drumming Up a Storm

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Sparks fly and worlds collide as renowned WA drummer Ric Eastman leads Defying Gravity through an electrifying celebration of the art of percussion.

Opening night: 19th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 20th Sep 7:30pm

Downtown

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

In the wake of so-called "Post-Minimalism", American composers have embraced the contemporary sextet's blend of instruments as an outlet for different musical influences. etica showcases some of the more recent repertoire that smudges the line between genres, performing works by David Lang, Stephen Hartke and Fredric Rzewski.

Opening night: 25th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 25th Sep 7:30pm

Quiet Nights

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The Jazz Vocal Ensemble and WAAPA’s Brazilian Ensemble dive into an ocean of Brazilian music where rhythms such as samba, bossa- nova and biaon swirl around the colours and textures of this fascinating style.

Opening night: 26th Sep 7:30pm   Closing night: 26th Sep 7:30pm

Sound Spectrum Festival 2

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Sound Spectrum Festival 2 includes new and experimental acoustic and electronic music performance, spatial and interactive works as well as the WA Laptop Orchestra, Ecuatorial 2 and 4 And Shock Of The New II.

Opening night: 7th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 11th Oct 7:30pm

The Hour of the Wolf

Acting performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

In an attempt to save his sanity, an artist and his wife retreat to an abandoned island. There they must confront his darkest secrets and her greatest fears.

Opening night: 11th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 17th Oct 7:30pm

Reefer Madness

Music Theatre performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Inspired by the original 1936 film of the same name, this raucous musical comedy takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the hysteria caused when clean-cut kids fall prey to marijuana, leading them on a hysterical downward spiral filled with evil jazz music, sex and violence.

Opening night: 12th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 19th Oct 7:30pm

Little Women

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

With their father fighting in the civil war, sisters Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth are at home with their mother - a very outspoken women for her time. The story is of how the sisters grow up, find love and find their place in the world.

Opening night: 12th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 19th Oct 7:30pm

Love and Mischief: WA Screen Academy Short Films

Special events at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Join us for a gala screening of exciting new short films created by the 2013 WA Screen Academy graduating class of producers, writers, directors, cinematographers and editors. Collaborating on the films are a range of WAAPA students, from the Actors onscreen, to original scores composed by the Music Composition students and the skills of WAAPA’s Production and Design department.

Opening night: 24th Oct 7:00pm   Closing night: 24th Oct 7:00pm

O Fortuna!

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Peter Moore leads WAAPA's woodwind students through a delicious arrangement of Carl Orff's thrilling Carmina Burana for double wind quintet, while Matt Styles directs the funky members of WAAPA's Saxophone Studio in an intriguing evening of re-interpretations where classical favourites like Bolero are performed in unique combinations.

Opening night: 24th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 24th Oct 7:30pm

Kaleidoscope: The Cultural Diversity of the Guitar

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The guitar is unique in the cultural diversity of its musical riches. In this program, WAAPA students perform works from different continents, different countries, and different ethnicities - including not only Europe, Latin America and Australia, but also Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Opening night: 29th Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 29th Oct 7:30pm

Piano Parade

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

This concert showcases the talent and achievements of WAAPA's dynamic group of piano students. Be dazzled and entertained by a musical feast of exciting masterworks.

Opening night: 31st Oct 7:30pm   Closing night: 31st Oct 7:30pm

A Brass Spectacular

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Joshua Davis leads WAAPA's dynamic Brass Ensemble through a varied and magical world of music for symphonic brass, showcasing the talented students and staff of the Classical Brass Department.

Opening night: 1st Nov 7:30pm   Closing night: 1st Nov 7:30pm

A Cup of Tea, an Aspidistra and You!

Music performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

The musical soiree reached its zenith in the Edwardian era. Heavy on both sentiment and morality, we can now look back at this period with a bemused affection. One cannot deny the emotional effect of the great parlour songs of the period.

Opening night: 15th Nov 7:30pm   Closing night: 21st Nov 7:30pm

Kardiny Ngalla Maya (Thinking Abour Our Place)

Aboriginal Theatre performances at the WA Academy of Performing Arts

Join us as we celebrate the creative outcomes of the Aboriginal Theatre program. An established playwright will collaborate with the students to produce a new dramatic work, offering a compelling insight into contemporary indigenous culture and performance.

Opening night: 16th Nov 7:30pm   Closing night: 21st Nov 7:30pm

Jardi

Dance performances at WA Academy of Performing Arts

This fantastic finale for the dance year includes Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato's exciting and passionate work, Jardi Tancat, based on Catelonian folk tales; Kim McCarthy's and Andries Weidemann's restaging of favourite scenes from the comic ballet Coppélia, set to music by Delibes, and a keenly anticipated new work by award-winning Australian choreographer, Leigh Warren.

Opening night: 16th Nov 7:30pm   Closing night: 23rd Nov 7:30pm

Skip to top of page