Melbourne welcomes show merging live radio and contemporary dance

This July, This American Life creator Ira Glass will bring his exciting live stage show, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, to Arts Centre Melbourne’s State Theatre. A combination of live radio and contemporary dance, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host is the passion project of Glass along with New York City-based dance group Monica Bill Barnes & Company.

The show includes radio interviews restaged as dance pieces, alongside stories from the lives of the three performers: Ira Glass, Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass. It’s split into three parts: Act One is about the job of being a performer, Act Two is about falling (and staying) in love, and Act Three explores how nothing lasts forever.

Glass reflected, “The show’s a mix of two things that really have no business being on stage together at all. Dance is all visuals, no talking. Radio’s all talking, no visuals. But what the stories on This American Life have in common with dance is music. That’s a start. And Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass are such funny, human-scale, relatable sorts of performers; their sensibility somehow matches a lot of what we do on the radio show. I know this whole thing sounds a little nuts but I swear it’s pretty great.” 

Glass encountered the work of Monica Bill Barnes in 2011 and invited her to guest on occasional live broadcasts of This American Life. Their collaboration gradually led to Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, which had its first run at Carnegie Hall in 2013. It has been performed in over 69 U.S. cities. This year, the show has been touring through select venues in California, New Hampshire and Alabama. Next it visits Charlotte, North Carolina before touring to Australia. It’ll also visit Sydney Opera House on July 17 and 18 while in Australia. Then it heads to London’s Royal Festival Hall in mid-August.

The New Yorker wrote, “Glass and the dancers have a similar sensibility – brainy, playful, taking pleasure in the warmth and awkwardness of human interaction, at times visibly charmed by their own creation. In Three Acts, Glass and the dancers perform in tandem and in harmony, with Glass narrating a story or addressing the audience, in a style familiar to his listeners, and Barnes and Bass providing movement that reflects, abstractly, on what he’s talking about.”

Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host will be presented on Thursday, July 14 and Friday, July 15 at 8 pm at State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne. Tickets are on sale now at artscentremelbourne.com.au. For more information, visit wheelercentre.com.

Photo by David Bazemore.