Here’s arts editor HELEN MUSA’s Arts in the City column looking at what’s making news around the local arts scene this week.

The third iteration of Women’s Room at the Canberra Comedy Festival, running March 12-23, will see the ACT’s funniest comedy dames strutting their stuff. Trish Hurley, Tanya Losanno and Jacqui Richards will be performing their new show, Underestimated, at the Courtyard Studio on March 13 and 16. “Never underestimate women; there’s a good reason the queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard,” they say. 

Then Chris Ryan, one of our home-grown comedy superstars, will present her fifth solo show, Extreme Tenant, at the Street Theatre on March 14 before she heads off on an Australian tour. 

The newly-announced 2025 Lanyon Art Prize is a $20,000 non-acquisitive award designed to preserve the story of Lanyon Homestead by encouraging artists to respond directly to its homestead, landscape and past. Site visits for artists are scheduled for March 8 and 12. All details at historicplaces.com.au

The Young Mannheim Symphonists, eight young musicians from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, will perform the Bach/Mendelssohn St Matthew Passion side-by-side with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s musicians and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs at Sydney Opera House on April 17. Canberra cellist Gabriel Fromyhr is one of the eight. 

Vincent Fantauzzo, who has painted everybody from Heath Ledger to Brian Schmidt and Julia Gillard, will be in conversation about his memoir Unveiled 6 for Meet The Author, Room T 2, Kambri, ANU, March 17. It tells the true story of how a street-fighting, dyslexic petty criminal became one of Australia’s most successful portrait artists. 

The popular Australian Haydn Ensemble will be in town to perform Haydn’s Sunrise, string quartets by Haydn, Beethoven and Fanny Mendelssohn, Wesley Music Centre, March 13. 

The ACT government is developing an ACT Artist Database to help connect anyone looking to engage local artists for paid opportunities. Canberra artists are being invited to self-nominate at artsact.smartygrants.com.au

The Song Company’s opener for 2025, Journeying to Finisterre, takes its inspiration from a tour along the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. There’ll be late Mediaeval works, Renaissance polyphony from Spain and Portugal, as well as songs by contemporary Australian composers Anne Cawrse, Joseph Twist and Paul Stanhope. Wesley Music Centre, March 9.