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ArtSound - Autumn Days & The Dear Departed

When ArtSound FM took over the Manuka Arts Centre gardens for the UPSTAGEING Canberra Festival, they brought with them decades of lived experience, razor-sharp wit, and the magic of a bygone era. Autumn Days delivered a powerhouse collection of monologues and short plays that compressed entire lifetimes into ten-minute masterpieces—proving that Canberra’s richest stories come from those who have had the longest time to live them.

Alongside these intimate performances, ArtSound revived the golden age of audio storytelling with a live radio play experience, bringing the mechanics of the studio right in front of an audience. From the bite of a 1930s inheritance comedy to the whimsical charm of a memory machine, these two videos capture Canberra’s finest creators doing what they do best: making us laugh, sigh, and remember what truly matters. Watch the live performances below.

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Mr Hay's Memory Machine — ArtSound FM Autumn Days

‘Mr Hay’s Memory Machine’ by C.B. Loomis. Loosely adapted by ArtSound Radio Theatre (Bart Meehan). Performed by: Tony Turner, Dick Goldberg, Elaine Noon, Gary Luck.

Autumn Days – a production of monologues and plays staged by ArtSound FM as part of the Upstageing Canberra Festival, celebrating creative ageing.

Autumn Days – Monologues and Short Plays.

A well-crafted monologue—or a tightly written two-hander—can compress an entire life into 10 minutes, revealing the quiet turning points, the unspoken griefs, the unexpected humour that emerges when we’re brave enough to sit still and listen. And when those stories are written and performed by people who’ve lived through decades of love, loss, reinvention, and resilience? The result is often devastating, hilarious, and utterly singular.

Autumn Days promises all of that. Some funny. Some heartbreaking. All exemplifying the lived reality of creative ageing in Canberra—a city that Festival Director Dr. Hope describes as “one of the most creative cities in Australia,” where people “genuinely understand how important creative activity is for health, wellbeing, and quality of life.”

On Saturday, March 29, from 2–4pm, the audience settled into the dappled afternoon light of the Manuka Arts Centre gardens and experienced something rare: theatre that doesn’t pander, doesn’t condescend, and doesn’t apologise for the age of its creators. Watch some of Canberra’s best actors perform script in hand as they make you laugh and sigh. You’ll be reminded that the richest stories often come from those who’ve had the longest time to notice what matters.

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The Dear Departed — A collaboration between The Mill Theatre at Dairy Road and ArtSound

The Mill Theatre tries something deliciously different: a live radio play, performed and recorded in front of an audience. Before screens took over our living rooms, radio drama was the beating heart of storytelling — and in Australia, it was once a golden age. From the 1930s to the 1950s, locally made radio plays and serials dominated the airwaves, shaping national culture and shared imagination. This production revives that tradition, inviting you to watch the mechanics of storytelling in real time: actors at microphones, sound effects created live, music underscoring the action — and a brand-new recording captured every night. It’s theatre, radio, and time travel all at once.

Our first radio play is The Dear Departed, a wickedly funny one-act comedy by British playwright Stanley Houghton, adapted for live radio performance. Set in the 1930s, the play skewers middle-class respectability as two selfish sisters, Mrs Slater and Mrs Jordan, descend into chaos over inheritance, furniture, and the very convenient assumption that their elderly parent has become a burden. Sharp, absurd, and gleefully unkind, The Dear Departed exposes how quickly moral values crumble when money is involved. Light on content and high on laughs, this is a joyous, silly, and surprisingly biting comedy — and a rare chance to be part of a live audience as a radio play is made before your eyes. Come for the nostalgia, stay for the chaos, and leave having witnessed something you truly don’t see (or hear) every day.