Here are the wonderful mentors supporting our ArtsLab 2019-20 artists-in-residence.
DAVID CAPRA is mentoring Bill Chau
Performance artist David Capra is known for his collaborations with dachshund Teena. In 2016 they appeared on the 9 Network’s Today Show to promote her own fragrance, Eau de Wet Dogge. In 2015 Teena’s Bathtime was launched at the MCA’s Jackson Bella Room, where visitors related to Teena’s experiences around anxiety- Teena doesn’t quite enjoy bathtime. In 2018, David and Teena performed “The long and short of it: Life lessons from art-dog Teena” to an audience of 5000 at TEDx Sydney and answered the question “What makes a dachshund the perfect muse?” in an article for the Guardian newspaper. Most recently, David and Teena collaborated with Kaldor Projects, producing a series of “Teena Takes on…” educational videos and the Kaldor Studio project at the Art Gallery NSW.
David is mentoring Bill Chau. PLASTIC SLIPPERS is an installation exploring the nuanced and overlooked beauty of Asian Australian culture and what it means to grow up in a Chinese, immigrant family.
BHENJI RA is mentoring Tall Jan (aka Brendan Donnellan)
Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice combines dance, choreography, video, installation and club events. She is the Mother of ‘Slé’, a young, Western Sydney-based Vogue house whose work consists of hosting events and Balls at the intersection of community and performance. Ra’s work is often concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity, centralising her own personal histories as a tool to reframe performance. Collaboration is key to her work as she regularly accesses her own community as an essential critical voice.
Bhenji is mentoring Tall Jan. In AMPLIFIER, watch Tall Jan lip-sync to audio from self-conducted interviews. This video artwork challenges the viewer to recognise experiences often ignored, interrogates the politics of drag, and questions the ethics of allyship.
DEBORAH POLLARD is mentoring Charlotte Salusinszky
Deborah Pollard is a professional theatre director, performer and artist. Her artistic practice has encompassed collaborations with a variety of different practitioners from dancers to farmers to performers and visual artists among others. Trained originally in theatre as a performer and director, her practice has shifted over the past 25 years towards a hybrid between performance and visual arts. She was artistic director of Salamanca Theatre Company, Hobart (1997-2000) and acting artistic director for Urban Theatre Projects (2006-2007). She also works as a freelance director, dramaturge and performer having worked extensively with Urban Theatre Projects, Paschal Berry and Anino Shadowplay Collective, Performance Space and version 1.0 among others.
Over the course of her career Deborah has received many prestigious awards and fellowships, most notable being the Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship in 2000, the Rex Cramphorn Scholarship in 2001 and a New Media Arts Board Fellowship from the Australia Council in 2002/3. Deborah’s extensive working practice includes leading roles in the development, co-ordination and facilitation of interdisciplinary arts labs for young artists in Australia including Splendid Arts Lab 2009, SITUATE- Art in Festivals 2016 and 2018.
Deb is mentoring Charlotte Salusinszky. In a solo devised performance, LITTLE JOKES IN TIMES OF WAR, Charlotte reenacts her grandmother’s role in her family’s escape from Hungary in 1956, and the repercussions of this event on her grandmother and herself.
LALLY KATZ is mentoring Lana Filies & Lily Hensby
Lally Katz is one of Australia’s most original and in-demand writers. She has written over 50 plays, most of which have been professionally produced. Lally’s work has been described “as if The Simpsons was written by Tennessee Williams” (Sydney Morning Herald 2016).
The double bill she wrote with Brendan Cowell The Dog/The Cat premiered at Belvoir in 2015 and had a return season in 2017. It is being performed this year in London and Las Vegas. She is currently writing a memoir for Allen and Unwin.
Lally wrote the libretto for Opera Australia’s operatic adaptation of The Rabbits by Shaun Tan which won the Australian Writers Guild Award in 2016 for Best Music Theatre script and won several Helpmann Awards, including Best New Work. Lally has recently had new, world-premiere plays open at Malthouse, Belvoir and at Melbourne Theatre Company. Her plays have been staged in London, New York City, Mexico City, Dublin and Delhi. Her one-woman show, Stories I Want To Tell You, has toured extensively and Lally adapted it for ABC TV and Matchbox Pictures in 2015. Lally wrote, starred and was a producer in the one-hour television production.
Lally’s play, Neighbourhood Watch, was written for Australian actress Robyn Nevin and has enjoyed a subsequent season starring Miriam Margolyes. Lally is currently adapting it for the screen with producers Marian Macgowan and Gillian Armstrong.
A Golem Story and Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd both won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. Lally’s work has received several Green Room Awards. A significant number of Lally’s plays are published by Currency Press, PlayLab and Australian Scripts Online. Lally regularly writes articles for magazines and newspapers and has been a panellist on television shows including Q&A, Agony of Modern Manners and Dirty Laundry.
Lally is mentoring Lana Filies and Lily Hensby. STALLS, a storytelling performance, is a relieving experience, creating an un-constipated kaleidoscopic view of the private and not so private universe within public urinals.
DAVID WILLIAMS is mentoring Luke Standish
David Williams is a leading Australian theatre artist whose works open spaces for public conversation about political and social issues. He was the Curator of ATF2015, and his theatre works have won Helpmann, Green Room and Drovers’ Awards. David holds a PhD from UNSW, is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, and is the director of Alternative Facts Pty Ltd.
Over the past decade, he has almost exclusively created documentary theatre, crafting evocative performances from found materials such as interviews, archives, and transcripts of public inquiries. Recent works include QUIET FAITH, based on conversations with Australian Christians about religion and public life, GRACE UNDER PRESSURE (co-written with Paul Dwyer), crafted from interviews with doctors and nurses about hospital workplace cultures, and SMURF IN WANDERLAND, an autobiographical work about football fandom and geographic belonging. The last two works were published by Currency Press, and GRACE UNDER PRESSURE will tour nationally in 2020.
In 2019 he will premiere two new works – the election night dinner party SORRY TO CUT YOU OFF PENNY for Tantrum Youth Arts, and the community celebration A CULTURED PLACE for Boroondara Arts.
David is mentoring Luke Standish. Part theatre, part documentary, STRIPPED unveils lived experiences of male exotic dancers, unpeeling perceptions and exposing the lives behind these vulnerable, strong, and extraordinary men.
ArtsLab 2020: Behind Closed Doors will run at 107 in Redfern from 26 February to 1 March. Season passes include access to the Industry Night.
