On a night like this: The week Australia took New York City by storm

There is never a shortage of Australians in New York City, but for the past two weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in central Sydney or Melbourne.

Last Friday, the iconic Empire State Building was lit up in green and gold for pop superstar Kylie Minogue, who played two shows at the city’s famed Madison Square Garden.

The Empire State Building, left, and Madison Square Garden lit up in Australian green and gold on April 4.Credit: Australian Consulate-General New York.

A short walk away at the Music Box Theatre, Adelaide’s own Sarah Snook has started the Broadway run of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a one-woman take on the Oscar Wilde classic that premiered at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) in 2020 with Eryn Jean Norvill playing the 26 roles.

In the years since, director Kip Williams has taken his manic, multi-camera production to London’s West End, also with Snook, and now to New York, where the Succession star performs for sellout crowds in the biggest theatre market in the world.

Meanwhile, acclaimed theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky, born and raised in Melbourne, brought The Threepenny Opera to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run earlier this month.

Kosky is the long-serving intendant and artistic director of Berlin’s Komische Oper. The New York Times called him “one of the busiest and most brilliant, not to mention entertaining, directors working in Europe today” and recalled Kosky’s description of himself as a “gay, Jewish kangaroo”.

The Threepenny Opera, directed by Barrie Kosky and performed by the Berliner Ensemble. It featured at the Adelaide Festival in 2024.

And Benedict Andrews, another Adelaide export, is currently directing his new take on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, following a sold-out London run.

“There is a really amazing tradition of Australian work coming over,” says Vallejo Gantner, a Melburnian who moved to New York City in 2005 to become artistic director of what is now Performance Space New York. He is the great-grandson of Myer department store founder and philanthropist Sidney Myer, a Melbourne legend.

This month’s visiting Australians add to a rich network of expats living and working permanently in the Big Apple who are making waves in theatre, music, visual arts, photography, architecture, food, film and design.

“They’re making an incredible impact for Australia. But we’re not wearing Australian flags around our necks,” says Gantner.

Vallejo Gantner, 50, is the new artistic and executive director of PS21, a contemporary performance centre in upstate New York.Credit: Ashley Gilbertson

“It is not people jumping up and down chanting, ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie’,” Gantner says. “It is actually people who are wanting to come to New York and test themselves and their creative mettle ’gainst one of the most challenging and hard cities to make it in the world.”

Gantner now splits his time between the city and Chatham, a town in upstate New York near the capital, Albany, where he was last month appointed artistic and executive director of PS21, a contemporary arts space on a 100-acre site far from the bustle of Broadway.

The 50-year-old is planning a winter program that takes some inspiration from the success of Hobart’s Dark Mofo: “Thinking of ways of embracing the cold and embracing the dark”. Hobart, he says, shows how art can drive not only economic activity but new ideas about how a city, even a relatively small one, defines itself.

The lighting of the Empire State Building in green and gold was sponsored by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the Australian Consulate-General in New York. Consul General Heather Ridout said it celebrated not only Minogue but the many Australians contributing to art music and culture in the city.

Kylie Minogue and Australian Consul General Heather Ridout at the Empire State Building lighting ceremony.Credit: John Nacion/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust

“These are some of the biggest events in New York’s arts calendar this year, and Australia is front and centre in all of them,” Ridout told this masthead.

Casting her eyes around the ceremony, Minogue said: “I feel like everyone’s shining in their individual ways and that’s what I love to feel and see around me.”

In a city known for strong opinions, not everyone was swept up in Empire State Building event. “I had no idea and to be honest, couldn’t care less,” Gantner said. “That is not how we advance a case that Australia is a culturally significant, vibrant, exciting place to live and work and make your way.”

In a whirlwind visit, Minogue also attended the premiere of George Clooney’s Broadway debut, Good Night, and Good Luck alongside Hugh Jackman, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Lopez and Pierce Brosnan.

Her two concerts were effectively mandatory for the thousands of Australians living in New York. Kip Williams, who left the STC last year after eight years as artistic director, attended and posted photos with the superstar in the green room.

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