Magic, movies, singing and stars… all in this latest “Arts in the City” column by HELEN MUSA. 

AN astonishing new magic extravaganza, “Metaverse of Magic”, featuring Tik Tok sensation Ash Hodgkinson (“Ash Magic”), Tokyo’s Hara Hiroki, Horret Wu, Jarred Fell from NZ, Australian Charli Ashby and Sabine van Diemen from The Netherlands, will be at Canberra Theatre, November 22-December 3.

DAN Sanguineti’s film, “The Way Sam Sees It”, was selected for the 10th annual Joy House Film Festival at Hoyts Mandarin Centre in Chatswood. Originally produced for the Lights! Canberra! Action! filmmaking festival in March, it focuses on Sam, a talented photographer with Down Syndrome, who sees a rainbow outside his window.

FOR the second time, Canberra novelist Chris Hammer has won the Crime Fiction Award in the Danger Awards, announced at the BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival, this time for his rural police procedural, “The Tilt” in which, the judges said, he “interweaves history and geography to create a compelling narrative that is also deeply moving”.

CANBERRA Mandolin Orchestra is planning an afternoon of foot-tapping music, dancing demos and whirling around the dancefloor with/without a partner – at the Folk Dance Hall, Hackett, 2pm, November 19.

AUSTRIAN star of stage and screen Maxi Blaha returns to Canberra for the premiere of the English-language production of “Mariedl, Selfies with a Giantess”, stepping into the life of one of the tallest women ever seen – Tyrolean Maria Fassnauer, known as “Mariedl”. The Street Theatre, November 24-26.

CANBERRA International Music Festival’s commissioning circle, A Major Lift, has announced its chosen composers for the 2024 event – Holly Harrison, from Western Sydney, who will write for an all-women percussion trio and Nicole Smede, a participant in Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers program, who will write a song for Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean.

ART Song Canberra’s next concert, “America Sings!”, will feature mezzo-soprano AJ America with Roland Peelman at the piano. Wesley Music Centre, Forrest, November 19.