Young actor Edward Hill believes his friends would have trouble understanding his life on the stage. "They barely know what it is so they don't really have a reaction, it's like they could barely comprehend it," he told AAP. At the age of eight, Hill has a lead role in Queensland Theatre's production of Medea, an award-winning retelling of Euripides' Greek tragedy, told from the perspective of her sons.

Not only that, he's juggling the part with his role in another Brisbane production, Merrily we Roll Along, at the Ad Astra Theatre. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. All this doesn't leave much time for school, where Hill studies year ten maths and year seven science via homeschool, attending class two days a week.

The gifted young theatre star does not find any of this unusual, or even particularly challenging - Hill says he's not someone who needs much rest. "I've adapted to it over the years, I'm not a normal human, I accept that." The Hill family is well known in Brisbane's arts community, with his mother running a dance school and his aunt and uncle currently part of the Merrily We Roll Along production.

Yet even for the most worldly eight-year-old, Medea has one hell of a storyline - as the play progresses the murder of her two sons draws inexorably closer. "They have pretend adventures all around their room, they have fights, all kinds of stuff," said Hill. "In the end they get poisoned.

" In the titular role, theatre v.