My Brilliant Career – A Musical Adaption

Monash University’s Ian Potter Centre for Performing Arts in Clayton will play host to an original musical adaptation based on the legendary coming-of-age novel by Miles Franklin ‘My Brilliant Career’.

The production forms part of the Jeanne Pratt Musical Theatre Artists in Residence program, which is now in its third year. The program sees a groundbreaking collaboration between Monash University performing arts students and professional artists that aims to create and promote the development of Australian musical theatre.

My Brilliant Career takes us into the world of fiery misfit Sybylla as she wrestles against the restricted life on offer for a young woman in rural Australia a hundred years ago. Growing up in a time when women are supposed to be demure and subservient to their husbands, wannabe-writer Sybylla is desperate to live an independent life, but will she risk it all in hopes of a ‘brilliant career’?

Written by Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank, who won Green Room awards for their musicals Prodigal and Once We Lived Here, the score promises a mix of period Victoriana and contemporary pop, bringing to vivid life one of Australia’s most loved feminist characters.

Students from the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Monash’s Centre for Theatre and Performance join some of Melbourne’s finest music theatre artists and creatives including director, Petra Kalive to magically bring to life this captivating story that lovers of both the novel and film will enjoy.