Stephen Oremus Masterclass

In 2013, the ANZ Trustees Foundation: Rob Guest Endowment had the opportunity of hosting a unique masterclass with Tony Award winning musical director, Stephen Oremus!

Stephen spoke about his experiences on Broadway and around the world, the audition process, and performing in musical theatre. There was also a question time with the audience, and work sessions with young artists who had been invited to sing in the class.

This masterclass was an opportunity for any musical theatre performer to benefit from Stephen’s extensive knowledge of musical theatre repertoire.

An Afternoon with Stephen Sondheim

On Friday 23rd November 2012 hundreds of people gathered for a unique ‘Afternoon with Stephen Sondheim’, held on the set of ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum’ at Her Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne.

ABC Classic FM’s Christopher Lawrence held an in-dept discussion with the legendary composer as some of the Australia’s finest musical theatre stars performed some of Sondheim’s greatest songs, accompanied by Kellie Dickerson on piano.

Cast: Mitchell Butel, Christie Whelan, Hugh Sheridan , Silvie Paladino, Martin Crewes, Jeremy Kleeman, Danielle Calder, Kalina Krusteva, Shaun Murphy, Makalya Bishop, Blake Bowden, Spencer McLaren, Liz Stiles, Suzie Mathers, Danielle Mathews.

Into the Woods

On Monday May 17 2010, the cast, crew and orchestra of the blockbuster musical WICKED performed a one off charity performance of Stephen Sondheim’s INTO THE WOODS to raise money for the ANZ Trustees Foundation: ANZ Rob Guest Endowment. The sold out performance hosted by Bert Newton, and featuring the WICKED cast including Lucy Durack, Rob Mills, Maggie Kirkpatrick, Zoe Gertz and James Smith, proved an enormous success both artistically and financially.

The performance also served to launch the Rob Guest Endowment for 2010, opening applications from young musical theatre performers. The 2010 winner will be announced at the Rob Guest Endowment Concert at Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre on Monday October 4.

The evening raised over $90,000 so far through ticket sales, an auction of unique WICKED items and donations, with more donations to be processed. This overwhelming success was made possible due to the generous support of WICKED Australia, The Capitol Theatre, the Rob Guest Endowment committee and all who attended.

The WICKED cast, crew and orchestra have spent most of their free afternoons and time between performances over the past two months rehearsing for INTO THE WOODS and it proved to pay off as it was a wonderful night for all.