How melodrama became the theme running through the 2026 Perth Festival
- Written by Jonathan W. Marshall, Associate Professor & Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University
Haribo Kimchi/Perth FestivalTheatre academic Peter Brooks championed the rise of melodrama as a popular form replacing tragedy. Melodrama, he said, tends to be explicit and hyperbolic in its representation of emotional and moral values.
Such a tendency within the arts to depict extremes of emotional life, and to do so overtly and with clarity, was...





