Triple-threat Andy Cook is one of Australia’s greatest showmen with a string of major musical credits to his name including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Strictly Ballroom, Oklahoma and Chicago.

But when COVID hit moments after he’d achieved a new career high – announced as the villainous Duke in the Australian premiere production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical – Andy’s personal and professional life was thrown into turmoil.

“I felt like I constantly spent time inside for two years and was an artist sometimes… I remember going to the airport and having severe anxiety about being outside of my house.”

In this podcast, Andy talks honestly about COVID’s mental health toll, the personal sacrifices of life on the road and taking back control of his artistic voice.

“Often you feel like you can’t say no when you really need to… If you just jump from gig to gig, you’ve blinked and you’ve missed everything… You start to become resentful of the job, and you never want that as an artist.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Andy Cook, Australian music theatre star

HOST: Adam Brunes

Produced By The Podcast Boss

“There can be 100 positive comments and one nasty one and that’s the one I hang my hat on.”

Powerhouse performer Shoshana Bean made her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning production of Hairspray in 2002 and has proved a vocal juggernaut ever since.

The Los Angeles-based musical theatre star has inhabited some of the genre’s most iconic leading lady roles including Elphaba in Wicked, Fanny Brice in Funny Girl and CeeCee Bloom in Beaches.

“It was really stifling and frustrating and it made me feel like I was doing musical theatre wrong, that I just didn’t have the instincts to do it right.”

After a 13-year absence where she concentrated on her solo music and performance career, Shoshana was coaxed back to Broadway in 2019 and cast against type as Jenna in Waitress, a refreshingly modern and widely acclaimed musical adaptation of a 2007 film.

In this podcast, Shoshana talks honestly about the acute demands of audience expectation; what it’s like to be publicly judged, critiqued and compared; and how “making it” on Broadway sometimes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“That’s what you think … I’ve got to get to Broadway … then you get there and it’s like, ‘Why is this not enough?’ Because it’s not the Holy Grail.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: Shoshana Bean, Broadway star and chart-topping singer

HOST: Adam Brunes

For information regarding your data privacy, visit Acast.com/privacy

“We got obnoxiously drunk and started inserting the ‘puppet’ into famous movie titles and ‘Dead Puppet Society’ just stuck. We knew we were going to change it when we came up with a better idea and it’s now 12 years old.”

In their own words, Nicholas Paine and David Morton are “hell bent on bringing their inimitable brand of entertainment to the world”.

In everyone else’s book, they’re the two guys who registered one of the coolest company names in showbiz.

Nick and David founded Dead Puppet Society in 2008 to create deeply imaginative theatre where the old school meets the technological and the mythic meets the modern.

“When we first started the company … we were hell-bent on this idea it was adult theatre.”

In this podcast, they reflect on a remarkable career trajectory that started at QUT, blazed a trail through Brisbane’s most respected arts organisations and festivals then on to the world stage, including residencies in New York and productions in the UK.

Yet through it all, they continue to battle a global misconception that puppetry is just for kids.

David and Nick offer their honest opinions on Brisbane as a breeding ground for artists, reveal their huge international plans and share some of the cringeworthy company names drunkenly proposed.

“Anything is possible. I mean, we’d get in a lot of trouble if we had to rip a limb off our performer but it’s fine for a puppet.”

For more honest opinions, follow us on Instagram @imho_aus, like us on Facebook @IMHOAUS, and sign up to become a Citizen Reviewer at inmyhonestopinion.com.au.

GUEST: David Morton, Creative Director and Nicholas Paine, Executive Producer of Dead Puppet Society

HOST: Belinda Seeney