"It fits perfectly with what the season is about and what theatre is about generally," Pike says.

"Theatre enriches people's lives in many ways."

And the 2016 season contains comedy, drama, music, dance and local, national and even international productions.

Pike says 2016 is almost "the Year of the Woman" at the Q with a particularly strong group of shows by and about women although it wasn't specifically planned that way.

The season begins in February with an Australian touring production of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, "an award-winning play out of America," Pike says. It was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2012 Obie Award for Best New American Play.

In it, 21-year-old Leo who turns up unannounced at his 91-year-old New York grandmother's apartment, having cycled across the country after breaking up with his girlfriend. He needs a place to stay for the night but ends up staying for a lot longer and the two learn more about each other and their family history.

"It's a really, really beautiful play."

Later in the season, Catherine Alcorn performs The Divine Miss Bette, a cabaret tribute to actress and singer Bette Midler including hits like The Rose and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

Noni Hazlehurst plays the elderly, homeless Christie in the one-woman play Mother, written for Hazelhurst by playwright Daniel Keene and directed by Matt Scholten.

And in Miss Bronte, Mel Dodge plays Charlotte Bronte, the author of Jane Eyre, in a one-woman show Dodge adapted largely from Bronte's own letters and novels and telling a story of ambition, forbidden love and the bond of family.

Educating Rita by Willy Russell is a two-hander, a comedy with naive hairdresser Rita (played by Francesca Bianchi), desperate for knowledge, seeking out cynical English professor Frank (Colin Moody) to introduce her to culture.

All My Love by Anne Brooksbank brings to life the love affair of Australian writers Dame Mary Gilmore and Henry Lawson (the former, interestingly, replaced the latter on the $10 note when the paper note was replaced by polymer).

They Saw a Thylacine by Human Animal Exchange was created by performers Justine Campbell and Sarah Hamilton. It deals with the death of the last known Tasmanian tiger in captivity in 1936 and links it in with extinction not just of animal species but of humanity as well.

Three women's stories from three different times – with settings ranging from Russia to France to Queensland – are told in Brisbane playwright Katherine Lyall-Watson's historical drama Motherland.

And in a Canberra production, Jordan Best will direct an all-female cast in April deAngelis's Playhouse Creatures, a play about the first time women were allowed to perform on the English stage, during the reign of Charles II. It tells the story of five actresses of the time as they struggled to establish themselves alongside male actors.

Another local production is the Queanbeyan Music and Dramatic Society's production for 2016, Rick Abbot's Play On! directed by Jarrad West in which a theatre company is attempting to put on a production of a whodunit called Murder Most Foul.

Pike says, "It's a play in a play, similar to Noises Off."

If it's music you want, there's Boys in the Band, performing a megamix of hits from several decades including songs by the Beatles, the Bee Gees, the Platters, Simon and Garfunkel and the Jackson 5. Or if it's dance you want, Melbourne Ballet Company will be presenting the contemporary ballet Divenire.

And from the US, Frank Ferrente will be recreating his portrayal of legendary comedian Groucho Marx in An Evening With Groucho, an evening of stories, songs and jokes.

For children, there's The Gruffalo and Goldilocks and the Three Bears and there will also be several non-season shows at the Q.

Pike says, "It's one of our better seasons ... I just like the feel of it."

Enrich. The Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre Season 2016. theq.net.au.