Spotlight Residencies: Bureau d’Exchange
Bureau d’Exchange is an immersive and entertaining cross-disciplinary art work set in a shop like installation. Here, the performers are shopkeepers engaging with the public through interactive story telling.
Participants are presented with an odd assortment of items. Similar to the idea of the readymade, this work takes commonplace objects and elevates them to the status of valuable commodities. The audience is invited into the ‘shop’ to browse, followed by a thought-provoking and enjoyable experience of exchange. The valuing and exchanging of goods is guided through the emotional attachment and associated narratives to the objects, posing questions about economic structure and the relationship to possessions.
About the artists:
Cynthia Schwertsik’s art practice is diverse, including visual art and contemporary performance, with a focus on activating public space. She works preferably in collaborations to investigate the oxymorons found in the wake of contemporary life. Absurdity and humour are central to Cynthia’s cross-disciplinary art-solutions
Cynthia has exhibited and performed throughout Europe, South Africa and Australia, been recipient of grants and residencies from Austrian and Australian government bodies. She has completed commissions for Australian councils, including the City of Sydney, City of Unley, and City of Port Adelaide Enfield.
Schwertsik holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Dance Diploma.
Emma Beech graduated from Flinders Drama Centre in 2000, and works across theatre and screen. She has established a practice developing theatre shows from meaningful conversations with strangers.
Emma has worked with The Last Tuesday Society, Real TV, Bron Batten, Patch, Monkey Baa, Playwriting Australia, Arts House, Open Space Contemporary Arts, STC, SA Museum, The Rabble and Vitalstatistix,
Along with theatre director, Tessa Leong, and visual artist. James Dodd, Emma founded the Australian Bureau of Worthiness, a residency model that creates theatre from interviews conducted with people on the street. She spent a two-year residency with immersive theatre company Carte Blanche in Denmark.
Elyas Alavi’s practice is interdisciplinary bridging elements from poetry to visual arts, from archive to everyday events with the intention to address issues around displacement, trauma, memory, body and sexual identity.
Alavi graduated from a Master of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia in 2016 and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 2013, and has exhibited at Mohsen Gallery (Tehran), Firstdraft (Sydney), Robert Kananaj (Toronto), IFA (Kabul), Chapter House Lane (Melbourne), UTS gallery (Sydney) as well as Ace Open, Felt Space, Nexus Arts, CACSA Project Space (all Adelaide). He is the recipient of a 2019 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship.
Valerie Berry is an actor, performance maker and emerging director. Throughout her practice, she has focused on collaborative and interdisciplinary processes. She has worked with, CAAP for Sydney Festival and Asia Topa, 2020 (Double Delicious), Yana Taylor (Leading is Following is Leading, Liveworks Festival 2020), National Theatre of Parramatta (Swallow, 2016) and Directed (Let Me Know When You get Home, 2021), CuriousWorks (One of the mentors for the Beyond Refuge Program), Polyglot Theatre (Paper Planet: Sydney and Norway), Theatre Kantanka, Urban Theatre Projects, Belvoir, Branch Nebula, Performance Space, Sydney Theatre Company and Performing Lines (Tour Germany and Adelaide Festival, Ur/Faust; and National tour of The Folding Wife).
In Adelaide, Valerie is an Associate Artist at ActNow Theatre and works as a facilitator, coordinator, lead artist and performer for their Theatre of the Global Majority program, and wrote and performed in The Decameron 2.0 project. She has worked with Cynthia Schwertsik (In My Name); Vitalstatistix (Game of I-Lands) Adhocracy 2020 and (Border Crossers) Adhocracy 2017; and with OSCA for the SUE Project.
Spotlight Residencies: Thomas Fonua
MAMA is a new physical-theatre work which examines gender, identity and Patriarchy from a south pacific lens. Drawing from the origin stories of the Samoan Fafafine and Tongan Fakaleiti, MAMA is commentary from this generational perspective of the labour division which validated the act of pre-colonial gender fluidity in accordance to a patriarchal society. It also examines the differences in the rite of passage of a boy becoming a man from the past traditional landscape to a present western/urban environment.
About the artists:
Thomas Fonua is an artist of Pacific decent with an established career as a dancer, choreographer and emerging leader. Thomas has worked for companies such as Black Grace (NZ) , Australian Dance Theatre, Red Sky Performance(Canada) and has been touring internationally from the age of 16.
Thomas’ alterego Kween Kong, is the Reigning Dragnation Australia Winner. With a strong focus to inspire, challenge and nurture our community with his loved based leadership style.
Thomas is the recipient of The (NZ) Prime Minster’s Award for Arts and Creativity(2015), Out For Australia’s Emerging Leader(2019) and has recently been nominated for the Dora Award For Outstanding Choreography in Canada.
Fez Faanana is well known for creating accessible, ground-breaking, physically dynamic, risqué and contemporary performance that infuses his Pacific bloodline, political bite, gender juggling, visual spectacle and tongue-in-cheek.
Fez is also Shivannah. He-she is the host and MC, choreographer, creative director, performer, collaborator and co- creator along with an all-male circus burlesque gender bending cast. As an independent artist, collaborator and arts worker/educator, Fez has toured extensively throughout Australia and internationally through Canada, the Pacific, the UK and the USA. He has featured in various cabarets, co-productions and commissioned works including Melbourne Comedy Festival, Melbourne International Festival, Sydney Biennale, Sydney Festival, Harbor Front Centre Toronto, Big Sky Works & Galapagos Art Space New York, Performance Space Sydney, Duckie Royal Vauxhall London and the Sydney Opera House Studio. He has also independently produced and programmed work for Brisbane Festival & Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Free-range Residencies: Jess Clough-MacRae
Trimates (working title) is inspired by the work of the pioneers of primatology, Drs Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas. Through a highly physical representation of the great apes, Trimates will explore the different ways that chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans communicate, whilst also telling the stories of the three women who studied them. Using text, movement and mime, this show will explore the parallel lives of the great apes and the pioneering scientists, in a bid to understand our complex relationship with the natural world.
About the artist:
Jess Clough-MacRae is a British/New Zealand performer, director, and movement director currently based in Adelaide. She studied at the University of East Anglia, the Bristol Old Vic Made in Bristol Programme and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.
She founded award-winning Clownfish Theatre and has toured their show Attenborough and his Animals in Australia, the UK and Europe, with sell out runs in Adelaide, Perth and Edinburgh Fringe. Attenborough and his Animals won a weekly award for Best Theatre at Adelaide Fringe 2021. Jess is also a member of award-winning Cut Mustard Theatre and has recently performed with Tessa Bide Productions.
Jess was the assistant director on the Bristol Old Vic’s recent production of Cyrano and associate movement director on The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare’s Globe and Touching the Void at the Bristol Old Vic.
Jess is an experienced theatre practitioner and has run workshops for children, teens, and adults, in schools in the UK and Australia and for the Bristol Old Vic Young Company, the Theatre Royal Bath and Shakespeare’s Globe.
Free-range Residencies: Lucy Haas-Hennessy
Autoeulogy is an original solo work by Adelaide-based theatre-maker Lucy Haas-Hennessy. An eerily prescient sci-fi tragicomedy about isolation at the end of the world, it was first staged at the Mill in early 2020 among the first ripples of the COVID-19 pandemic. One very long year later, the work will be redeveloped against the fascinating new cultural landscape that the pandemic is leaving in its wake, asking questions about what’s changed about the end of the world - and what hasn’t.
About the artist:
Lucy Haas-Hennessy is an Adelaide-based actor, playwright, dramaturge and theatre-maker, and was the entire creative team behind the first production of Autoeulogy. Lucy’s work is interested in the contemporary significance of the ancient art of live performance - in what makes it continue to make its inimitable impact on audiences and hold its ground even in the high-tech digital age. She is a 2017 graduate of the Adelaide College of the Arts acting program, a 2019 Helpmann Fellow, and a 2021 intern with Brisbane-based theatre company Zen Zen Zo.
Lucy will be joined in this phase of development by Mary Angley (director and dramaturge), an emerging theatre-maker and a recent graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts’ Master of Directing program. In 2019, Mary created Paper Mouth Theatre as a forum for bringing together emerging creatives to work on experimental projects within a Queer, Feminist framework. Mary’s work has received support from The Helpmann Academy, Carclew, Splash Adelaide, Science Gallery, and La Mama.
Free-range Residencies: Samuel Hall
The project is to develop a new immersive and interactive dance theatre production. The work will be performed in The Lab at Light Adelaide and will utilize the latest LED screen technology. The central dramaturgical premise of the work is a contemporary ritual that invites the audience to reconnect with themselves, place, and community in order to release that which holds them back, especially in relation to the experiences of the past year.
About the artist:
Samuel graduated from the New Zealand School of Dance in 2016 with a Diploma in Dance Performance. In 2017, he created his first professional choreography ‘Subsequent Slavery’ for the NZ Fringe Festival before performing in Strut Dance Inc’s restaging of ‘One Flat Thing, Reproduced' by William Forsythe. He then went on to join Swedish dance company Norrdans for their 17/18 season as an Apprentice. In 2018, he joined the acclaimed production ‘Sleep No More Shanghai’ by immersive theatre company, Punchdrunk. In 2020, he returned home to South Australia where he began working as a freelance dancer. He worked for major Australian company’s Dancenorth and Australian Dance Theatre, before joining the cast of Lewis Major’s Adelaide Festival double bill, S/Words and Unfolding. Samuel has consistently sought choreographic opportunities throughout his performance career, creating works for Light Adelaide, Dance Hub SA, QL2 Youth Dance Company, Norrdans, and his own personal projects.
Brink Productions Theatre Residency: Jo Zealand
Staged at Adelaide Fringe 2021, Jo Zealand presented the first stage development of ‘The Circle Show’, an interactive performance piece blending music, comedy, clowning, and dance. The work explores awareness of self; inviting the audience to connect with their true nature through creative play.
As the successful recipient of the 2021 Brink Productions Theatre residency, Jo will be working with Chris Drummond as an artistic provocateur who will give dramaturgical, design and conceptual support to develop and extend this new work.
About the artist:
A performer for 25 years, Jo Zealand specialises in interactive theatre, comic character and physical theatre with a musical twist and has an Advanced Diploma in Professional Screenwriting from RMIT. Jo’s aim is to use performing arts to bring about connection, awareness and joy. Beginning her training as a founding member of Restless Dance Company and Slack Taxi, Jo has studied with master teachers across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Artistic Director of No Strings Attached 1999-2004, she lead the company on an overseas tour and was nominated for an Innovation Award.