Over the past 27 years the company has worked with literally dozens of exciting artists, designers, musicians, technicians and cultural thinkers. Profiled are a number of key collaborators who have been circling around the company over the last 5 years.
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Paschal Daantos Berry is an independent Filipino/Australian writer who creates his works through highly collaborative processes. He is inspired by interdisciplinary works and is interested in developing projects that focus on both the diversity of cultures and artforms. Paschal was selected for the Royal Court International Residency in London, 2000. His works are Jerusalem Syndrome (2002), The Great Tale (2000), Found Objects (2000), Triptych (1999), Ancestry of My Eyes (1998), Conversation Through the Wall (1997) and Defecating Jesus (1996). He was the recipient of Belvoir's Asian Australian Young Playwrights Award in 1996 for Defecating Jesus. He was short-listed for the Asialink Playwrights Award for Found Objects in 2001. As a writer/dramaturg, he has contributed works for Urban Theatre Projects, Radio National (ABC), Griffin Theatre, The Australian Choreographic Centre, Belvoir Asian Theatre Festival, The Performance Space, ATYP, Multicultural Theatre Alliance, Platform 27, Canberra Youth Theatre and Tuggeranong Arts Centre. From 2003 to 2005 he was the resident dramaturg at The Australian Choreographic Centre, where he developed projects for Quantum Leap Youth Choreographic Ensemble with Ruth Osborne as well as the dramaturgy for Tanja Liedtke's Twelfth Floor. Recently Berry wrote the critically acclaimed The Folding Wife, in collaboration with Manila based company Anino Shadowplay Collective, Deborah Polard and Valerie Berry; which was produced by Urban Theatre Projects and Blacktown Arts Centre, and toured by Mobile States. Currently he continues his collaborative relationship with Anino Shadowplay through the new project, within and without. This project was developed through Translab at Performance Space, an initiative by Australia Council Theatre Board.
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Sam James has been a projection designer for contemporary performance companies and independent dancers since 1995. Most of his focus is in collaborating with independent dancers, making projections for live works, installations and dance films. He has taken part in over 200 performance works in Australia. Various credits include Nun's Night Out (choreographer Julie-Anne Long, winner Best Australian Dance Film, Australian Dance Awards 2006), Nargun and the Stars (Erth, Sydney and Perth Festival '09), Figment and The Darkroom (choreographer Narelle Benjamin with the Australian Ballet and Sydney Dance Company '07/'08), Improlab (De Quincey Co at the Studio, Sydney Opera House, Perth, Melbourne and Calcutta, India). With Urban Theatre Projects he has been the designer for The Cement Garage, The Longest Night, india@oz.sangam and Back Home, and also does video documentation for UTP. He has received four Australia Council Inter-Arts grants for collaborative projects and regularly has his dance videos screened in International Dance Film Festivals, recently Simulated Rapture in Moves '09 Manchester. He was just recently on a residency in Berlin to finalize a dance video installation, Vivaria for Cinedans Amsterdam 2010.
http://www.shimmerpixel.blogspot.com.
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I am interested in creating performances derived directly from carefully constructed audio recordings. Through the disciplined recreation of these ‘audio-scripts' in performance, my work aims to recontextualise rarely heard or misrepresented Australian voices. The work magnifies candid, personal stories from within a specific community as a means of exploring broader political and social tensions.My creative process includes an extensive collection phase, during which I draw material from a variety of audio sources including interview, media and found recordings. In performance, I employ a headphone-verbatim technique that requires actors to wear headphones, via which they are fed an audio-script. The actors recite this audio-script with absolute precision (like a musician following a score), recreating the exact speech patterns of original interviewees. The result is a hyper-natural form of documentary theatre that evokes the essence of the audio source with fidelity – even if the performer is of a conflicting gender, age or racial background to the original speaker. Visual appearance is rendered unreliable and the audience's focus shifts into a heightened state of listening.
I am particularly interested in capturing the dynamics of group conversation and operate from the principle there is as much information embedded in the way someone speaks, as what they are saying.
Roslyn has directed two works with UTP, Stories of Love & Hate (2008) and Fast Cars & Tractor Engines (2005). She has been commissioned by Bsharp to develop a new work called I'm Your Man in 2010.
Contact details: rosoades@yahoo.com
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Deborah Pollard is an, artist, performer and director based in Sydney. Her works focus on collaborations with arts and non-arts practitioners. She has created a number of interdisciplinary performance and installation works.
Deborah has worked with Urban Theatre Projects, Performance Space and Version 1.0 among others. She was Artistic Director of Salamanca Theatre Company in Hobart from 1997 to 2000 and interim artistic director of UTP in 2007. Since 1993 Deborah has collaborated with Indonesian performance and installation artists, creating large-scale performance works, most notably Postcard (1995), Badai Pasir (1996) and Girt By Sea (2002). Deborah has been a recipient of the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship (2000), the Rex Cramphorn Scholarship (2001) and an Australia Council NMAB Fellowship (2002/03). Her performance Blue Print premiered at Performance Space in October 2007. She recently toured her durational performance installation Shapes of Sleep to the UK (2006) and Singapore (2008). In 2008 she received an Asialink residency, which she undertook with Theatreworks in Singapore.
Deborah is currently undertaking a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, where she is researching the difficulties around representation within the theatre, and in particular the use of real-time duration to create a sense of the ‘real'.
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Lily Shearer is a Muruwari (north-west NSW/south-east QLD) woman and has been a custodian of Darug (Sydney basin) lands since 1988. Lily currently works at the Redfern Community Centre . She was the Indigenous Performance Broker at the Performance Space, and has been involved as cultural consultant on a number of projects involving intersections for Indigenous and non-indigenous artists. Lily also performed with the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre and is a founding member of the Corroboree Indigenous Arts Collective.Lily has 25+ years experience in Indigenous Australia women's dance, Heritage & Culture, Youth/Welfare Work, Community Cultural Development and Theatre making/practitioner. She was the Female Artistic Director and founding member of BUNDAHBUNNA MIYUMBA, Indigenous Australian Heritage & Culture Experience, 1997-2003. This small business offered a variety of hands-on activities for ALL to participate, promotes cultural diversity of Indigenous Nations, encourages Indigenous youth participants and carries the spirit of reconciliation to all who participate.
Lily's role as an Indigenous Community Theatre Maker has varied in projects to include Choreographer, Assistant Director, Director, Stage Manager and more. Since commencing theatre studies at University Western Sydney - Nepean Campus, Lily has worked on a number of indigenous theatre making processes in Sydney and Sydney's Greater West to include.
Lily attended St Patrick's Primary School in Brewarrina, NSW and completed her High School, as a boarder, at St Scholastica's College, Glebe, Sydney, NSW. Lily obtained a Diploma of Social Welfare at Macarthur University, Milperra Campus and a Bachelor of Arts at University of Western Sydney, Nepean Campus – Theatre, Theory & Practice.
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Mirabelle Wouters is a Belgian set and lighting designer, a graphic artist, a contemporary dancer and choreographer, and an industrial design graduate. She's been living and working in Sydney since 2002. This year Mirabelle and Branch Nebula secured a Translab research grant for a new major work SWEAT and worked in residency at The Performance Space. Earlier this year she designed the set and lights for The Football Diaries by Ahilan Ratnamohan produced by UTP; and for The Riot Act directed by Karen Therese produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre; and did lights and choreography for The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons by wade Marynowsky at the Performance Space Gallery. Last year she toured all through Australia with her show Paradise City as the co-creator and designer. Earlier in 2008 she was the set and lighting designer for Urban Theatre Projects' The Last Highway in the Sydney Festival. In 2007 Mirabelle designed the set for Martin Del Amo's dance solo Never Been This Far Away From Home to open the Performance Space's first season at CarriageWorks. In 2006 she was a co-creator and designed the set, costumes and lighting for Paradise City by Branch Nebula at the Sydney Opera House Studio. In 2004 she co-created and designed the set, lighting and costumes for Plaza Real with Branch Nebula. She also conceived and co-designed a new solo performance: Mrs. White. She was a performer in Stalker Theatre Company's Incognita touring Europe in 2004 and in 2003 playing in Melbourne International Arts Festival, Sydney Festival and in Perth International Festival.Mirabelle is a founding member of Branch Nebula and is a performer, choreographer and co-designer with the company for the projects: Mad Red (1999-2000, Sydney, Belgium, Switzerland), Sentimental Reason (2001-2002, Sydney, Belgium, Perth), Cattle Prod (2002, Belgium), Mrs. White (2003-2004, Sydney), Plaza Real (2004, Sydney), and Paradise City (2006-2007, Australia, Brazil). She worked as a dancer and deviser in Carte Blanche by the Belgium-based company Hush Hush Hush. The show toured successfully throughout Europe for two years in theatres, hip-hop festivals and contemporary dance festivals. Carte Blanche won the ‘Signaalprijs' (Signal Prize) for best youth theatre in Belgium in 1997. Mirabelle also created and performed choreography for the short Australian film Split Rhythm directed by Bridgid Kitchin.
Mirabelle completed an industrial design degree in 1995 at the ‘High Institute for Architecture and Industrial Design' in Antwerp and did a post-graduate in scenography (theatre set and lighting design) at the Flemish Autonomous University of Antwerp department Drama, Music and Dance.
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Over the past 20 years Heidrun Löhr has photographed the productions of a multitude of Theatre and Dance Companies in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra including Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney and Melbourne Theatre Companies, Malthouse Theatre, Performance Space, The Studio-Opera House, Gravity Feed, Force Majeure, Version 1.0 to name just a few. Before that, she worked as a freelance photographer in Theatre, Film, Media In Munich and Berlin before moving to Australia in 1984.Heidrun is currently editing an animation of dancer/performer Nikki Heywood and collaborating with performance artist Rosie Dennis on a sequence of large scale photographs. She spent time as Artist in Residence in HillEnd, 2005 and in Bundanon, 2007. The work Exterior/Interior created in Hill End was exhibited at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery as part of the show Frames of Reference, 2006. Heidrun's performance photography featured on the ABC,TV Sunday Arts Program in 2005. At the Drill Hall, Critical Path in May 2009 Heidrun presented a large scale multi screen installation Projections which utilised old and new technology she selected over 700 images from her vast archive focussing on dance and movement.
She collaborates extensively with independent artists, dancers and performance artists including JulieAnne Long and director Aku Kadogo and two Pitjantjajarra women, Nelli Patterson and Nura Ward. Heidrun is in the process of cataloguing her extensive collection in order to create a digital archive.
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Clare Britton is an artist who works to create original, visual theatre. In 2003, Clare co-founded theatre company My Darling Patricia, and has played an integral part in devising, designing and performing all of My Darling Patricia’s productions. My Darling Patricia has received theatre and design awards in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and were Malthouse Theatre’s 2009 company in Residence. The work made in residence at Malthouse, Africa, will tour Nationally with Mobile States in 2011.
Clare studied Sculpture at COFA, UNSW leaving in 2000 to build puppets/set pieces and tour as a performer and rigger with Erth Visual and Physical Inc. At this time, Clare also participated in a number of training and mentorship initiatives at PACT theatre and gained her advanced rigging ticket and scaffolding ticket. In 2006, Clare received an Australia Council Skills Development grant to study under Philippe Genty at the VCA. Clare has an active freelance practice and an ongoing collaboration with artist Matt Prest. In 2010 they presented their works The Tent at Darwin Festival and PICA (August 2010) and Hole in the Wall at, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Next Wave Fesitval and The Performance Space (April/May 2010).
With Urban Theatre Projects, Clare worked in production roles on India@OZ, Karakoe Dreams, Mechanix and Plaza Real. More recently, Clare designed the set and costumes for Stories of Love and Hate and worked on My Darling Patricia’s new work Posts in the Paddock in residence as a part of UTP’s Intersection Residency Program.
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Gabriel Porras has developed UTP's distinctive brand across all printed and digital media since 2006. He has also designed the look and feel for UTP shows such as The Last Highway (2008), Stories of Love & Hate (2008), The Football Diaries (2009) and The Fence (2009). As a media-neutral creative Gabriel started his career as an exhibition designer for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas (Venezuela) where he was born, after completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture (Central University of Venezuela and Ecole D’Architecture Paris Val de Marne). He had stints working in both New York and Paris before moving to Sydney where he studied a master in Design Science: Digital media (The University of Sydney). Most recently Gabriel has been an award-winning art director in marketing and advertising, working with brands such as Virgin Mobile, Volkswagen and Audi.
For more information visit: www.pixotomy.com
