BIG hArt is an arts and social change theatre company with 25 years’ of collaborative creativity to find, write and tell the stories that form the layers of our Australian communities and working with them to involve and engage often with those most marginalised.

In a launch of a different kind at the Ottoman, a place that has become a kind of ancestral home for the company as the closing-night choice for all its previous Canberra seasons with feasting and imbibing depending on the box-office receipts, some famous locals were in the spotlight telling their immigration stories.

The Cataldos, Angelo and Emilio relived theirs with Mikelangelo (Mikel Simic, of the Black Sea Gentlemen) putting to song the story he’d arranged from their family story with Dino Nikias and Con Tsoulias adding to the reminiscing, which gave us all an idea of Big hArt’s new project

It’s called Project Cosmopolitana and will culminate in the production “Ghosts in the Scheme” at Canberra Theatre in September with Cooma in the spotlight as writer director Scott Rankin delves into the underbelly of the town that saw a multicultural influx of mammoth proportions for the Snowy Mountains’ Scheme.