Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA Resourceful Hero Struggling Against Incredible Odds(Co-production between St Martins Youth Theatre and Rawcus Theatre, for Midsumma Festival, 2022)Rawcus unites with a group of queer and allied young people to explode the word 'hero' into a thousand pieces and save you from it. [epic music] Using verbatim text from 90s action films, A Resourceful Hero Struggling Against Incredible Odds is a simultaneous homage to and lambasting of Hollywood blockbusters. [gunshots and explosions] Watch as we attempt to inhabit the persona of Bruce/Tom/Arnold and then figure out why we love him so much. Why do we want to be him? Are we allowed to be heroes too, running toward danger, surviving, and looking hot while doing it? Would you trust us to save you? This Midsumma. Get ready. For a takedown like you've never seen before. [music intensifies] Coming soon to a theatre near you. Presented by Midsumma Festival and Rawcus, in partnership with St Martins Youth Arts Centre, this playful deconstruction of the ‘hero’ sits at the intersection of queerness and disability. A celebration of diversity and visual story-telling, this performance offers a chance to see the heroes none of us grew up with on our big (or small) screens.
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ItemAn Uncertain Time(Fuse Festival, 2022-03-23)An Uncertain Time was an original performance work for babies aged 0-12 months and their carers. The culmination of a a praxis based approach to investigating dramaturgical principles of theatre for very early years audiences, this sensory and immersive performance work incorporated two performers, live music and song, projection and object puppetry.
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ItemWalkative Melbourne(Walkative Society, 2021)This public walk took place live online for the Walkative Societies International Walks in Lockdown. We walked the periphery of Melbourne's Mantra Bell City Hotel at first light, while speaking to surreptitious footage of the hotel's inner workings taken by day. Formerly a hospital, the 1950s nurses’ swimming pool within apparently transports one’s mind away from the six lanes of traffic at the hotel’s suburban entrance… Until very recently Mantra had been a prison for over 60 refugees detained indefinitely on its third floor. These people were transported from Australia's offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru through “Medevac” legislation. This legislation, now repealed, gave doctors the authority to send asylum seekers in medical need to Australia for treatment. Refugees were detained at Mantra for 16 months of their 8 years in continuing detention. The daylight refracting from the hotel's glass exterior contributes to the concealment of the workings inside, whereby a private institution has been used to conduct public business so contentious that it typically takes place offshore. During COVID lockdown the hotel was within the 5km radius I could walk. In a period in which public protest has been largely impossible, walking this perimeter and engaging with this politics live as an international community has both gravity and credence.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableUs(St Martins Youth Theatre, 2021)An online performance inviting you into the magical moments found within home. Performed live online each night, Us shows home life as it is. The work captures micro-interactions between parents and their children, the beautiful, frustrating, messy, ridiculous, loving moments that usually go unseen, kept secret in the private realm and left out of grand narratives. Us is an invitation into the living room of a family that’s not yours and a wild meandering tale of how you are connected to them.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLullabies Under the Stars(The Milstead Performing Arts Company, 2021)Presenting itself as a short (50 mins) diversion for very young children, Lullabies is actually an occasion for young parents to share a key family ritual as a group. In the final movement of the piece where lullabies are shared, we have seen and heard parents sing to their children in Hindi, Fijian, and a hilarious nonsense-English; we’ve shared spontaneous singalongs, learnt snippets of Japanese together, and shared these intimate and vulnerable expressions of maternity/paternity in a unique moment. Lullabies is about your community meeting each other and celebrating its own diversity. And in transforming the simple act of singing to your child into a powerful ritual it elevates young parenthood, which can feel like a chore to say the least, into an exclusive, affirming, privilege.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHello, World!(Melthouse Theatre, 2020)A woman starts eating herself alive to protest climate change inaction—the internet goes wild. A drowning island downloads a dating app to make one last connection before it disappears forever. Three hackers are convinced that crashing a plane filled with people will save the rest of humanity from ecological collapse. As exponential human technological development comes into collision with the greatest environmental challenge of our time, Hello, World! asks if we can make it out alive, with our dignity still intact.
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ItemVirtual Crossings Melbourne - Geneva -Auckland(TrakLAB, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, University of Melbourne & Cie Gilles Jobin, 2021)How do we build choreographic systems for dancing with those we cannot touch? In a world in which the medium of a mask and the interface of a screen are omnipresent, touching at a distance becomes a choreographic problem. Developing tools to navigate a touchless habitat engages actions of crossing thresholds - between physical and virtual, distant and near – from the perspective of cellular bodies hardwired for touch. Virtual Crossings is a network of artists engaged in cultivating distant touch through remote collaboration. Initiated by Cie Gille Jobin Geneva, this inter-disciplinary network engaged partners in Melbourne, Geneva and Auckland for simultaneous remote performance and research through a virtual architecture embodied through motion capture technology. Virtual Crossings mobilises soma-technic states as new spaces for dance to travel safely and with minimal impact.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSight Unseen(Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2020)Tasked with creating a work through disembodied and disconcerting means, this piece became focussed on illuminating dancing that emanates from often imperceptible spaces, and the volume of the body’s interior. As each dancer engaged with their own “unseen” movement capacities, more of their individually embodied dancing was revealed. The practice of revealing and concealing according to context weaves the dancers’ individual lineages into the work, questioning perceptions of what it is that is “seen” and how this is authenticated…individually, communally and societally.