Madison Lee on community, belonging and identity.
As a proud queer creative, Madison Lee is committed to fostering inclusive, respectful rehearsal environments and championing LGBTQIA+ representation within the performing arts.
Madi is a rare quadruple threat in a world of triple threats - choreographer, director, performer and, most importantly, coffee lover.
A Sydney Theatre Award nominee for Best Choreography in a Musical, Madi's work is grounded in story-led movement, musicality, and ensemble storytelling. She brings extensive experience supporting productions from early development through to long-running seasons and remounts.
After recently returning from a Queensland stint working across productions including A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, We Will Rock You, and the new Australian musical Anarchy, Madi is thrilled to be back in Melbourne collaborating with an exceptional group of Melbourne based artists on Sweet Charity.
Directing our upcoming season of Sweet Charity with Heirlume Productions, Madison joins us to chat about what draws her to Charity’s hopes and struggles 60 years since the premiere performance on the value of recognising the love and strength of the community around you.
What draws you to the story of Sweet Charity? Considering it's the 60th anniversary of the Broadway premiere, is it important in your creative practice to explore existing works in new ways or are you drawn more to creating new works?
The world the women in Sweet Charity are surviving in, and the quiet resilience it takes to exist inside it - that’s one of the main things that draws me in.
There's something really powerful to me about a group of women navigating a system that was never built for them, where their worth is constantly being measured, consumed and dismissed, and yet they continue to show up, support each other and find ways to keep going.
What made me so excited about this production is not just Charity's story, but the women around her too. The idea that while she's been taught to look for romantic love, the real love, the kind that is constant and unconditional, has been beside her the whole time. It feels like a story about survival, about belonging, and about what it costs to keep choosing hope in a world that doesn't always make space for you. And that's something I feel really drawn to exploring.
I think existing works become really exciting when we allow ourselves to look at them honestly through a contemporary lens without losing what made them powerful in the first place. I'm not interested in modernising Sweet Charity for the sake of it. I'm interested in asking what was already there, what may have been overlooked, and what lands differently now.
In my creative practice, I'm really drawn to works that can hold joy and complexity at the same time. Sweet Charity is exactly that. It is funny, sexy, theatrical and full of life, but it also has so much to say about gender, survival, performance, belonging and the need to be loved.
How do you think today's audiences will relate to the story of Sweet Charity?
I think audiences will relate to Charity's search for belonging. At its heart, this show is about wanting to be loved without having to earn it, perform for it, or become someone else to receive it. That is still incredibly relevant.
There is also something very contemporary in the idea of someone slowly realising that the life they were taught to want may not actually be the life that fits them. Charity spends so much of the show looking for love in places that cannot hold her, when the real love has been around her the whole time. I think that will really resonate.
I'm really excited for audiences to experience a version of Sweet Charity that feels raw, gritty and a little more confronting than they might expect.
We're not leaning into a glossy, polished version of the world, we're letting it feel lived-in, a bit rough around the edges, and emotionally honest. There's humour and joy in it, but it sits alongside something sharper underneath.
The world we're building is industrial, unfinished and unmistakably New York, with scaffolding and exposed structure as a major visual language. In a venue like Chapel off Chapel, that rawness can feel alive rather than decorative. It allows the audience to feel like they are inside the world with the characters, not just watching it from a distance.
We’re still going to deliver everything you want from this show though - we have incredible triple threat performers who are singing, acting and absolutely dancing their hearts out. That iconic Fosse style is still there, but it's grounded in something that feels real and immediate.
How has adapting the musical to include more queer representation affected your interpretation of the work?
It has deepened the work rather than changed it. We are not placing a modern idea on top of the show; we are looking honestly at 1960s New York and the kinds of underground spaces that existed at the time. The Fandango becomes a sanctuary, a place where gender, sexuality and identity can soften in a world that polices those things.
That queer lens gives Charity's journey another layer. It becomes less about whether she ends up with a man and more about whether she can recognise where she is truly loved, accepted and seen.
If you could give Charity one piece of advice, what would it be?
I would tell her: the love you are looking for does not need to cost you yourself.
You do not have to be chosen by someone else to be worthy. The people who love you are already there. Look around. Let them catch you.
Sweet Charity plays for a limited season of performances 18 - 28 June at Chapel off Chapel, a co-presentation with Heirlume Productions.
