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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.
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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
Nancye Hayes
Nancye Hayes OAM
When she was a child, Nancye Hayes had a serious hip problem.
‘When I was being taken into the operating theatre,’ she recalls, ‘the doctor asked, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” and I said, “A ballerina.” Then he said, “Well, I’ll have to do a very good job.’”
Young Nancye, born in Sydney in 1943, turned out to be not only a superb dancer, but a fine singer, actor, choreographer, director and teacher. >> Read more
Co-recipient of the 2011 JC Williamson Award™ that recognises outstanding contribution to the Australian live performance industry
Toni Lamond
Toni Lamond AM
‘It is not difficult for anyone to fall under the spell of Toni Lamond,’ says Bert Newton. ‘Millions of Australians have been doing it for years. We know Toni and she knows us – and what a partnership it has been and continues to be for us all.’
Patricia Lamond Lawman, the daughter of comedian Joe Lawman and soubrette Stella Lamond, was born in Sydney in 1932. >> Read more
Co-recipient of the 2011 JC Williamson Award™ that recognises outstanding contribution to the Australian live performance industry
Jill Perryman
Jill Perryman AM MBE
‘Working for J.C. Williamson’s was possibly the greatest thing that ever happened to me,’ says Jill Perryman. ‘I loved Williamson’s, funnily enough, before their theatres were tarted up, because I loved the grottiness backstage. As you opened the stage door there used to be an onrush of the smell of size, which is the glue that they used for the sets and the backdrops and everything. >> Read more
Co-recipient of the 2011 JC Williamson Award™ that recognises outstanding contribution to the Australian live performance industry
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.’