About Stage Whispers

Stage Whispers

Overview

Stage Whispers is an Australian performing arts magazine and news website covering theatre at every level — professional, community and school — across Australia. It combines a bi-monthly print magazine, published continuously since the title's revival in the late 2000s, with a high-traffic website carrying news, reviews, production listings for every state and territory, a bookshop for playscripts and an annual guide to putting on a show. The May/June 2026 edition of the print magazine was announced on the website in 2026, and the site's news pages run continuously through the year, reporting casting announcements, awards and industry news alongside an extensive What's On database. The editor is Neil Litchfield, a Sydney-based former drama teacher who, with Sydney journalist and theatrical agent David Spicer, bought the magazine in the late 2000s when it was close to folding. The magazine's stated purpose, in Spicer's words, is "to encourage people to attend and participate in the performing arts at all levels" — a mission that distinguishes it from purely professional theatre media by giving community and school theatre the same serious coverage as the major companies.

History

Stage Whispers began life in Melbourne in 1990 as, in the words of a later profile, "the voice of amateur theatre on a scratchy newsprint". Its first editor was Jeff Jones, whose first editorial — recalled in the magazine's own 25-year retrospective — joked that "playing editor means not much sleep, more grey hair and the need to install a telephone answering machine". Over the following years the magazine's circulation declined amid patchy editorial and layout, and by the late 2000s, as its present owners put it, it "had only a faint pulse". Two of its regular contributors, David Spicer and Neil Litchfield, bought the magazine and set about rebuilding it: by its 20th birthday in 2010 it had gone full colour and semi-gloss, was published every two months with around 4,000 copies printed per issue, and Spicer reported that subscriptions had increased in every edition bar one since the takeover. The production team assembled in that period has remained strikingly stable and, as the magazine's retrospective notes, has never all been in the one place together: editor Neil Litchfield works from Sydney, while layout artist Phil Tyson and advertising manager Angela Thompson are based in Melbourne — a distributed arrangement that predated the internet era's remote publishing norms. In recent years the balance of the operation has tilted decisively online, with the website becoming the larger part of the enterprise while the print edition continues on its bi-monthly cycle.

Programming and Content

Coverage spans the full range of Australian stage activity. The print magazine carries features and interviews with theatre-makers — the May/June 2026 edition, for example, featured the stars of the musical Waitress, Anastasia lyricist Lynn Ahrens reflecting on her partnership with Stephen Flaherty, and Reg Livermore on his swan song in My Fair Lady — alongside dozens of reviews of professional and community productions; in 2010 the magazine was averaging around 50 reviews per edition. News coverage is daily in character: in January 2026 alone the site reported the 2025 Sydney Theatre Awards winners and nominations, Opera Australia's full cast announcement for The Phantom of the Opera on Sydney Harbour, and an obituary of actor Patsy King. Standing features include state-by-state What's On listings, community theatre season guides, a "Schools on Stage" section covering school productions and licensing editions for young performers, theatre history features drawing on specialist archives, a jobs board, and practical production advice in its "Let's Put On A Show" strand, whose 2026 guide was published on the site. Its community theatre season guides, compiled by Litchfield with contributions from correspondents such as Peter Pinne, have documented the seasons of hundreds of amateur companies, and at times extended beyond Australia — a 2012 guide covered community companies throughout New Zealand, from Wellington and Auckland to Invercargill and Queenstown. The magazine also chronicles the business of theatre itself: its 25-year retrospective drew on publicists and writers to record how social media had transformed show marketing, how crowdfunding had given independent theatre new life as government support dwindled, and how the growth of "pro-am" companies in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane was blurring the line between professional and amateur production — the very boundary the magazine has always straddled. The Stage Whispers bookshop sells play texts from publishers including Currency Press and Nick Hern Books, with free preview reads of opening pages, bulk-order quotes for schools and community companies, and bonus magazine subscriptions attached to book purchases.

Audience and Reach

The magazine's audience is the broad Australian theatre community: professional practitioners, the very large community theatre sector, school drama departments, and audience members who follow productions in their own state. Its dual professional-and-amateur brief gives it a reach unlike any purely professional outlet — community companies use its listings and season guides, schools use its bookshop and Schools on Stage coverage, and producers use its news pages to reach theatregoers. The owners reported around 4,000 print copies per issue in 2010, and the website's audience has since overtaken print: the magazine's own 25-year retrospective stated that the site was receiving 60,000 unique visitors a month, and that "many more people see the cover of our magazine on a Facebook page than at a newsagent" — figures presented here as the magazine's own published claims. David Spicer remains an active contributor as well as co-owner: he was among the reviewers who previewed "Musicals in 2026" for the site in January 2026.

Digital Presence

The website, stagewhispers.com.au, is the centre of the operation. It is organised into news, reviews, On Stage listings searchable by state, community theatre, schools, history and shopping sections, and it is updated on a rolling basis — its On Stage database was listing productions running through 2026 across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory at the time of writing. The site hosts the online bookshop, the Let's Put On A Show Guide and the announcement of each new print edition, and subscriptions to both print and electronic editions are sold through it. A separate UK-based Substack newsletter launched in 2025 also uses the Stage Whispers name but is a distinct publication by different writers covering the British theatre industry; it is not part of the Australian magazine.

Ownership and Organisation

Stage Whispers is owned by David Spicer and Neil Litchfield, the two contributors who purchased the magazine in the late 2000s and rebuilt it. Litchfield, the editor, is based in Sydney; Phil Tyson handles layout and Angela Thompson advertising from Melbourne, the same core team the magazine credits with putting it together since 2008. Reviews and features are contributed by a network of writers around the country, including Peter Pinne, who has compiled community theatre season guides for the magazine, and Coral Drouyn, whose theatre history series appears on the site. The magazine began with a central Melbourne office in the pre-internet era; today it operates as a small distributed team coordinated online.

Contact and Availability

Stage Whispers is published bi-monthly in print, with the May/June 2026 edition the latest announced on the site, and electronic editions are available as well. Subscriptions and single editions are sold through the magazine's website at stagewhispers.com.au/subscribe, and the bookshop at stagewhispers.com.au/books sells playscripts with immediate dispatch for single purchases and bulk quotes for schools and community theatre companies. News tips, listings and enquiries are submitted through the contact form on the website. The current news, reviews and production listings are freely readable at stagewhispers.com.au.