A Few Words About Me
I have worked in areas of program management, community projects and cultural development in local and state governments, NGOs and tertiary institutions. I have specific skills in project management, program operations, stakeholder engagement, funding programs and sponsorship, strategic planning and policy development.
I have managed Performing Arts centres, facilitated event programs for over 35,0000 people, developed Arts, Events and Cultural Strategies and have implemented projects that have nurtured, developed and promoted a diverse demographic including artists, writers, performers, educators, young people, CALD communities and those struggling on the fringes.
The arts are my modus operandi of expression and function in the world. If the process is a collective one, then it will be an expression of that community. Democracy, social justice and civil society all depend on the individuals who make up the community and their ability to speak their hearts and minds.
Creative expression
I have been involved in the independent arts sector for over twenty years as a director, actor, writer and producer. I am the creative director of an award winning independent theatre production that involved three sell out seasons, exhibitions, performance installations and an international residency in an Irish Women’s prison. Interspersed with my arts practice are the additional mantles of tertiary educator, arts facilitator, arts strategy and policy developer and artist mentor. In recent years I have worked in additional areas of arts including venue management, arts administration and festival management. Artistically her practice spans a multitude of artistic mediums: theatre, circus, visual and literary arts, performance installations, and physical narrative.
My practice explores the synergy between physical interpretation, social commentary and intimate reflection that assumes a role in political dialogue, consciousness raising and social justice. I seek to create theatre that can be utilised as an agent for change, seeking to inspire and challenge in the hope that audiences will continue to reflect on the themes presented and consider their perspectives accordingly. My professional theatre work includes: Girls in Grey, The Women’s Jail Project, Rendition of the Soul and Shoes of Desire Pt 1. My visual arts installments include ‘Trees of Aspiration’ with the Queen Victorian Womens Centre Trust, and ‘a walk of art ...’
I was awarded the prestigious Ewa Czajor Memorial Award in 2001 for The Women's Jail Project. The Ewa Czajor Memorial Award is coveted as one of very few awards for women directors. The Victorian Women’s Trust is the organisation that developed the Memorial Award.
The arts are my modus operandi of expression and function in the world. If the process is a collective one, then it will be an expression of that community. Democracy, social justice and civil society all depend on the individuals who make up the community and their ability to speak their hearts and minds. Often my community-based arts projects involve members of communities who are acquiring the skills or confidence to tell their own stories, with their own voices. I work with compassion and empathy to ensure this process is nurturing, self-affirming and positive.
My work in government, community and arts practice has involved teaching in various capacities; through the education system (kindergarten to tertiary level) as well as running workshops for NGO’s, women’s groups and legal organisations. My work is inclusive and accessible: because some participants may find non-intellectual methods unfamiliar, embarrassing, or even threatening, I am very careful to create safe, non-judgmental environments. My collaborations and projects have involved a diversity of communities such as rural and regional youth, CALD, psychiatric clients, survivors of sexual abuse, women, newly arrived immigrants and children. I am a recipient of the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship (St James Ethic Centre) for my initiatives in community theatre work.
Passion
I am self-trained, my process of training unique to my life circumstances. While studying at University, I decided to audition for NIDA. However there were other plans afoot and this path was thwarted by an unexpected pregnancy. So I pursued and developed my own brand of study by applying for funding to enable me to engage specific directors I wished to work with and learn from. It was a method that resulted in working with people like Maude Davey (Drowning in her Soup) and Greg Dyson (Don’t Tell Me I’m Glowing): the latter performed while 7 1/2 months pregnant. This self-devised training schedule also helped me acquire administrative skills in producing, budgeting, marketing and promotion, subsequently helping to provide opportunities to complement my creative work with employment in areas of Cultural and Arts Development and policy development in State and Local government.
My work is layered; while a storyline may seem to be about a characters experience in a given context, the depth of work explores themes of truth, boundaries of consciousness, and things on the peripheral. These are the general themes of my work. I seek to shine light to such depths, my explorations forming the basis of all my work.
I am a visual person: I need to see things to help me understand them. Therefore what evolves or is inspired through my heart and mind tends to need a physical expression – a dissection and searching through the intricacies of the complexity of what it is to be human. This is a process that generally draws on intuition and a trust in one-self or at the very least a ‘hold on tight’ capacity to a sense of integrity of a vision. My last major piece, Rendition of the Soul, while inspired from images of Abu Ghraib, became an exploration into the shadow of the self, very Jungian one may say. The tricky thing with my projects is that sometimes I need to open doors to experience what it is I am exploring. How can one write about famine in the midst of feasting? So in this particular project the process laid my torments and insecurities bare. Not in a narcissistic or even cathartic way but in a curious seeking and probing for meaning.
Some researchers have taken a social-personality approach to the measurement of creativity. In these studies, personality traits such as independence of judgement, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation and risk-taking are used as measures of the creativity of individuals. If I view myself through this creative lens, I see that I tend to be open to new experiences, perhaps a little less conventional, more driven and definitely spontaneous or somewhat impulsive. I ask direct question in an attempt to delve deeper to figure things out. I do not fear tackling topics and themes that explore significant human experiences, for ultimately I need to focus on the fundamental essence of issues and disregard the superfluous. This does not mean my work is didactic for I respect an audience’s intelligence and I will often utilise educational frameworks to develop narrative structures to help her to present complex and conflicting ideas in an accessible way. There is no hiding behind mainstream thought or conventional methods for this sort of play.
So what is it I wish to achieve? Basically what I have always achieved: creating work that helps us see differently, encourages our imagination, opens a space for critical thinking, and even transforms us.
