Tama Matheson

Tama is an award-winning writer, director, and actor with a passion for bringing together music and the spoken word. He has been producing Lyric Dramas for several years in both England and Australia, where they have met with universal acclaim.

Tama has written and performed six original plays, including Ben (on the life of Benjamin Britten), Bright Stars Shone for Us (on Tchaikovsky), Don Juan – the Scandalous Life of Lord Byron (performed this year at the Barnes Festival), Panufnik – his Quest for Peace, The White Mouse (on the war heroine, Nancy Wake), Johann Sebastian (on the life of Bach), and his own adaptations of A Christmas Carol and Christmas Fairy Tales. He has also recorded his Christmas Carol for 4MBS radio in Australia, where it is played every year, as well as his own adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

With several awards as both director and actor under his belt (Matilda Awards, Green Room Awards, Del Arte Charts), as well as two nominations as a writer, Tama is now keen to also embrace the virtual world and is working to on Lyric Dramas Audio plays.

Tama was Artist in Residence at 4MBS Classic FM for 3 years, during which time he produced several radio programmes, as well as audio productions of his own adaptation of A Christmas Carol and his original drama about Polish composer Andrsej Panufnik.

Tama has collaborated on Lyric Dramas with several orchestras, including the London Mozart Players, Solomon’s Knot, the Brisbane Camerata, and the Melbourne, Tasmanian, and Queensland Symphony Orchestras. He is booked to perform with the Royal Philharmonic and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 2021 – in both instances to produce Lyric Dramas.

As an opera director, Tama has worked all over the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Oper Graz, Houston Grand Opera, Melbourne and Perth and South Australian Opera. He has also worked at Covent Garden, The Mariinsky Theatre, Teatro Real, Madrid, and Baden Baden Opera. As a theatre director, he has worked extensively in Australia, where he is Artistic Director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival (which he established in 2006), as well as in London.

Tama studied English at Oxford University and Drama and History at the University of Queensland

Tama speaks English, German and Italian