Imagine a young girl in Melbourne’s suburbs, the sporty type, more into writing music and playing piano than wearing pretty dresses on stage. That girl, Vidya Makan, wasn’t exactly your stereotypical theatre kid. But then something shifted. At 15, she auditioned for her school’s production of The Wiz, half-heartedly wrote “Dorothy” on her audition sheet, and suddenly found herself sold. From that moment on, theatre became everything.
Years of late-night studio rehearsals, early-morning dance warm-ups, and encouragement from a supportive singing teacher propelled her to make her mark on stage with leading roles in Hamilton and SIX. Now, Vidya Makan steps into the spotlight in a different way – as creator and storyteller of The Lucky Country musical, which returns for its second round in Melbourne and Brisbane this year.
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Makan traces the spark for The Lucky Country back to 2018, when she attended a musical featuring friends in the cast. “It got to the interval and some jokes on stage that were made were so racist… and I turned to the person next to me and said, “This is kind of messed up,” she recalls. Their response, “well, that’s just Aussie humour,” stayed with her.
“Being racist is Aussie humour… I think that is the perception,” she says. She goes on to explain, “the Australia that I know [is] actually pretty awesome, and I think we underwrite ourselves.” For Makan, that extends beyond “brown people” to “anyone who seems to be on the sidelines.” Her vision of what it means to be from this continent is “very different to [what] we’re often told” in commercial and mainstream media.
With her collaborator Sonya Suares, she is boldly shaping space with The Lucky Country, a bold, cheeky chamber musical that remixes Australia’s cultural soundtrack into something new, inclusive, and deeply human. Described as a “60-minute mixtape of Aussie stories,” the show unwinds through an ensemble of six performers and a five-piece band, complete with a didgeridoo.
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The show follows a collection of all-Aussie characters including a 13-year-old Thiitharr Warra kid, whose youthful optimism is dashed when he clashes with his teacher’s notion of ‘our shared history’. While he grapples with this, the show follows a collection of all-Aussie characters including grey nomads who find love on a Contiki tour, a Chinese Australian restaurateur who dreams of life as a Byron Bay nudist, a young refugee in Mingoola, a WW2 veteran, an aspiring actress and a fake Russian choir.
The Lucky Country is touring to:
- Melbourne – Southbank Theatre, The Lawler from 13 to 18 October 2025
- Brisbane – Brisbane Powerhouse as part of MELT Festival from 22 to 25 October 2025
And for those who can’t wait, the original cast album lands even sooner, releasing on 14 August 2025. As the composer and lyricist Vidya said, “we wanted the music to feel instantly familiar, like flipping through the radio dial of Australia. You’ll hear echoes of Baker Boy, Jimmy Barnes, Kylie, The Seekers, Electric Fields plus loads more – all remixed through a contemporary lens that feels uniquely ours.”
As far as representation goes, Vidya says, “you often get confused about whether being a person with coloured skin or coming from a minority automatically makes you an activist.” She’s quick to clarify, “I’m not an activist — I’m an artist, and I want to just be an artist.” For her, art is “inherently political, or at least it can be,” and anything she wants to say to the world — whether it’s about dealing with grief, holding each other, or uniting — is expressed through her work rather than “on an Instagram story.”
It’s a balance she’s constantly negotiating. She doesn’t take for granted who she is and how being a non-white artist shapes her voice, but she also wants “the freedom my counterparts have — to simply exist without carrying the load.”
In her earlier career, particularly during Six, she often felt the weight of “representing” every time she stepped on stage. Over time, she’s realised that mindset can be “really debilitating,” and that “whether I’m conscious of it or not, I’m always going to represent brown girls — and that in itself is enough.”
READ MORE: Vidya Makan: In the room where it happens
WATCH THE FULL PODCAST WITH VIDYA MAKAN HERE
