Find inductee
It's easy to find inductees in the Hall of Fame.
Select the Find Inductees button on the menu.
Then select By Alphabet which lists inductees alphabetically. OR select By Decade, which lists the inductees in the decade they were born. OR select Complete List, where all the names of the 100 inductess are listed.
Tell us more
The biographies were all written by historian, Frank Van Straten.
If you have more information on any of the inductees, please tell us about it.
OR, you may have photos, or come across web sites that may be interesting.
Related Links
MOPA - Online catalogue of the Museum of Performing Arts based at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, Western Australia.
Live Performance Australia Hall of Fame
Welcome to the LIve Performance Australia HALL of FAME.
Live Performance Australia, the peak body for Australia’s live entertainment and performing arts industry, has a history that stretches back to the closing days of the Great War. But our Hall of Fame goes back even further, back to the days when Australia was a collection of struggling British colonies far away from the bright lights of the West End and Broadway.
Australia has a rich history of live entertainment, but in these busy days it’s all-too-easy to lose sight of our performing arts history and the people who made it.
This virtual Hall of Fame is Live Performance Australia’s way of paying tribute to a remarkable collection of theatre people. In our Hall of Fame you’ll encounter actors and directors, playwrights and designers, singers and instrumentalists, comedians and dancers, circus performers and puppeteers, theatre architects and entrepreneurs, and even a critic or two. Some you’ll know, others not. But they’re all great people with great stories and we know you’ll enjoy meeting them.
Choosing them wasn’t easy, so we set up an expert committee to advise us. They came up with an initial eighty nominees. To them we’ve added with the winners of the James Cassius Williamson Awards that we’ve been presenting annually since 1998, recognising living individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the performing arts in Australia.
So what you’ll find here is a gallery of remarkable achievers, men and women who have added significantly to our performing arts history and heritage.
We are all the richer for their contributions, and we invite them, through our virtual Hall of Fame, to spend a little more time in the spotlight, and to take another well-deserved bow.
Evelyn Richardson
Chief Executive, Live Performance Australia
Frank Van Straten
Official Historian, Live Performance Australia
Featured Inductees
Jimmy Little
Dr. Jimmy Little AO
For many years James Oswald ‘Jimmy’ Little was the brightest Aboriginal star on the Australian music scene His career as a musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist spanned six decades.
>> Read more
Katharine Brisbane
Katharine Brisbane AM
Katharine Brisbane has been aptly described as ‘the den mother’ of Australian playwrights. In a life dedicated to Australian theatre, she has been a perceptive and respected reviewer, a zealous advocate for the industry and its people, and an adventurous publisher of Australian plays and performing arts history.
>> Read more
Did you know
Meet the great Australian musician who built his own museum.
Meet the singer featured on the first Australian-recorded CD.
Meet the theatre critic who was also a forensic expert.
Meet the very successful travelling showman who became a very unsuccessful property developer.
Meet the Aboriginal circus performer who found fame when he claimed to be Spanish.
Meet the actor whose mother put up the money for his first theatrical enterprise.
Meet the Australian vaudeville star who was arrested for indecency in Boston.
Meet the flamboyant Australian entrepreneur who died in poverty in London.
Meet the Australian star who called himself ‘the oldest chorus boy in London.’