Creative Team

All The Queens Men

Creators / Producers - 2017, 2018

All The Queens Men create spectacular theatrical and participatory community arts experiences.

Led by Tristan Meecham and Bec Reid, All The Queens Men champion social equality by providing creative opportunities for diverse members of society, celebrating these ‘everyday experts’ in exciting and technically proficient art contexts. Combining contemporary and popular art forms and tropes, All The Queens Men mission is aligned to that of pioneering UK company Duckie who state –

we believe that art and performance can be used as tools to bring about community solidarity, to make ordinary people happy and even for personal development and recovery for the most vulnerable amongst us. We use popular forms of entertainment, volunteer participation and the poetics of partying to make our shows accessible to communities that are marginalised from society.

With over 30 years of combined experience in contemporary community engagement, All The Queens Men have presented leading large-scale community projects around the world including: Arts Centre Melbourne, Bleach Festival (Gold Coast), Ansan Arts Festival (South Korea), ANTI Contemporary Arts Festival (Finland), Sydney Festival, Darwin Festival, Arts House (Melbourne), Brisbane Powerhouse, Next Wave Festival (Melbourne), Festival of Live Art and City of Melbourne amongst many others.

www.allthequeensmen.net

James Andrews

Dancer - 2017

James is an Australian dancer and dance maker working in the realms of experimental contemporary dance as well as the underground queer club landscape.  Recent credits include DISCORDIA (Arts Centre Melbourne), YUMMY, DARK MOFO and regular club appearances as JANDRUZE at Honcho Disko, Barba and AnotherTechnoParty.

Robyn Archer

MC / Performer - 2017

Robyn Archer AO FAHA is a singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts. In addition to her continuing career as singer, writer and director, Robyn is currently Strategic Advisor, Gold Coast Arts and Culture; Chair of the Arts Centre Gold Coast  (and tasked with oversight of the A$150million transformation of the Arts Centre into the Gold Coast Cultural Precinct); Chair of the National Institute of Dramatic Art ( NIDA)’s Master of Fine Arts in Cultural Leadership, and ongoing mentor for the European Festivals’ Association international Academy/Atelier for young festival artistic directors.

An acknowledged exponent of classic European cabaret, Robyn was named Cabaret Icon at the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and won the Helpmann Award as Australia’s Best Cabaret Performer 2013.  Recent concerts have included Canberra, Adelaide, Oxford (UK) and the Melbourne Recital Centre. All three of her current cabaret recitals (French, German and American) will be seen in a season at Griffin Theatre, Sydney, July 4-15 2017 and she has ben invited to perform at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival and in New York in 2018. Robyn has written a new show  The Sound of Falling Stars which she directs for a premiere at the 2017 Adelaide Cabaret Festival and subsequent performance at the Auckland Cabaret Festival. She has performed throughout the world, from Bogota to Berlin, Darwin to den Bosch, Paris to Perth, and her one-woman show A Star is Torn ran for over a year in London’s West End. She made landmark recordings of Brecht songs, in English translation, at Abbey Road with the London Sinfonietta. Robyn has recorded twelve albums, including many of her own songs such as the ground–breaking Menstruation Blues , and her writing includes essays, songs, works for the theatre and  children’s books

In demand as a speaker, Robyn hosted the 2016 Performing Arts Exchange of APACA (and will repeat that role in August 2017 as well as being their thinker in residence) and the Australia Council Awards, gave a keynote address for the Council on Humanities and Social Sciences and was mentor for the EFA Festival Academy in Chiang-Mai in December ( her 7th year in that role). She opened the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference, in New York in January 2017 and was invited to speak for the programming team at Esplanade Theatres on the Bay in Singapore in February. UWA Press published a selection of her addresses as Detritus and she appears in the Australian Book Review ( Robyn is the second ABR Laureate) and Griffith Review, most recently with the lead article for their edition on South Australia – State of Hope.

Former Artistic Director of the National Festival of Australian Theatre (Canberra), the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals, Ten Days on the Island (which she created for Tasmania), and The Light in Winter (which she created for Federation Square, Melbourne), Robyn worked for two years on the European Capital of Culture, and on the start-up phase of Luminato (Toronto). She has received many awards including The Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leadership Award, the International Society of Performing Arts International Citation of Merit, and the Premier’s Lifetime Achievement Award ( SA).

She is patron and ambassador for numerous organisations throughout Australia, including Restless Dance Theatre, Brink Productions and the Adelaide Football Club ( all Adelaide), the Australian Art Orchestra (Melbourne) and is mentor to the European Festivals Association’s Festival Academy and to a number of younger artists and artistic directors.

Robyn is an Officer of the Order of Australia, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) and Officer of the Crown (Belgium), and holds honorary doctorates from Flinders University (South Australia), Griffith University (Queensland), and the Universities of Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy for the Humanities.

You can see more about Robyn at The Deparcher Lounge – robynarcher.com

Breifs: Close Encounters

Performers - 2018

Prepare yourself for interstellar aerial feats and warp-speed strippers from outer space as the Briefs boys apply their skill and humour to push the boundaries of artistry, masculinity and decency.

Close Encounters is the third instalment from Breifs. It premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2017, had its UK debut at London’s Underbelly Festival on The Southbank, enjoyed a successful run at Auckland’s Q Theatre, and in 2018 crash-landed at Sydney Festival.

Marnie Badham

Project Evaluator, 2017, 2018

With more than 20 years of art and social justice practice in Canada and Australia, Marnie has research expertise in socially-engaged art, the politics of cultural value and evaluation, and participatory methodologies. In 2018, she has developed an international series of creative cartography projects to register attachments to public space and map local emotions in response to the changing natural environment within a number of regional communities. Her book entitled The Social Life of Artist Residencies: connecting with people and places not your own will be published in 2019. Marnie is Vice Chancellor’s Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Art at RMIT University in Melbourne.

Andy Black & Blake Adams 

DJ - 2017

Andy & Blake have been DJing at clubs, festivals and in people’s lounge rooms for more than two decades.

These two have made people move at Toff, Rooftop, Bella Union, Outpost, Golden Plains, Sugar Mountain, AFL Pride Round, Tilda… and feel excited to do the same for you at the Town Hall!

Andy & Blake are humbled and honoured to be a part of the Coming Back Out Ball.

Carlotta

Performer - 2017

Carlotta is an Australian cabaret performer and television celebrity. She began her career as an original member of the long-running Les Girls cabaret show, performed entirely by heavily costumed males, which started in 1963 in the purpose built Les Girls building which stood on a prominent corner in the heart of Sydney’s Kings Cross, New South Wales. The building was owned by Sydney identity Abe Saffron. Carlotta, a transgender person, rose through the ranks of the show to eventually become the show’s compere and its most famous member. Les Girls and Carlotta soon became must-see attractions for visitors to Sydney and the show was popular with visiting international celebrities. The show continued in the Les Girls building until 1993, the Les Girls show went on-the-road, touring Australia, which inspired the film “Priscilla Queen of the Desert”. The Les Girls building, which was still standing intact with original 1960s features, throughout the 1990s was the venue for alternative cabaret, including the much loved Sunday night club The Tender Trap (club).

Carlotta was featured in the soap opera Number 96 in 1973 as Robyn Ross, the new girlfriend of Arnold Feather. In the story it was soon revealed that Robyn was in fact a transsexual showgirl, a revelation that led to the character’s quick departure from the show. To preserve the shock ending to this storyline the true identity of Robyn’s portrayer was kept secret from all but a few central cast and crew members of the series, her scenes were shot on a closed set, and Carlotta was credited as “Carolle Lea”.

Carlotta’s sex-change operation in the early 1970s was not the first such procedure in Australia, but due to her celebrity status it became the first to receive publicity there. Carlotta was also one of the inspirations for the film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. She had a few short breaks from Les Girls for international tours, but overall by the time she left the show for the final time in 1992 she had spent a total of 26 years performing with the troupe.

From 1997, Carlotta has been a regular panelist on the discussion program Beauty and the Beast.

In 2005, she featured in her own half a million dollar stage production, “Carlotta’s KingsX”, presented at the Big Top, Luna Park, Sydney. Produced by Brett Elliott and Richard Bernardo, the 90 minute show delivered classic storytelling, stand up comedy, lavish costumes, and team of ‘Les Girls’ dance performances throughout. Supported by massive 6x22m video backdrop, video content presented the story of Kings Cross collated from footage supplied by ABC, Channel Seven and Channel Nine.

Carlotta is currently touring Australia with her “Carlotta – Queen of the Cross; show and regularly features at all sorts of festivals and gala premieres, including Melbourne’s Midsumma, Gold Coast’s Glitter and Brisbane’s Melt festivals.

Carlotta is a guest panellist on Channel TEN’s Studio 10 morning Show. Where she gives her view on the latest breaking news and hot topics. Studio 10 broadcasts live from 8.30am every weekday from Network Ten’s Sydney studios at Pyrmont, plus a “best of” edition on Saturdays and Sundays.

Deborah Cheetham

Performer - 2017

Deborah Cheetham, Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer and educator has been a leader in the Australian arts landscape for more than 25 years.

In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Deborah was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), for distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance.

In 2017 Ms Cheetham was invited to perform an excerpt from her latest work Eumeralla, a War Requiem for Peace in the ancient language of the Gunditjmara people, at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco for the opening of the Venice Biennale, before embarking on a recital tour including performances in London, Paris, Rome and Singapore.

Like her multi-award winning opera Pecan Summer, Eumeralla is set to advance the progress towards a meaningful reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians.

Gerry Connolly

Performer - 2017

Gerry Connolly is an accomplished Australian comedian, actor, impressionist and musician, best known for his satirical caricatures of public figures.

Corporately and in one-off national events, Gerry Connolly is in demand as an after-dinner speaker and entertainer. Over many years, he has enlivened audiences and dinner guests with his musical charms and venting his observations through concise and sometimes ridiculous performances via political luminaries such as Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Margaret Thatcher, John Howard and highlighted the unique leadership styles of the likes of Pauline Hanson, Bronwyn Bishop, Tony Blair, President Abdurrahman Wahid, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Clive Palmer. Media celebrity Lee Lin Chin is a crowd favourite, as is his most demanded character, Her Majesty The Queen, in whose guise he has launched nearly everything not nailed down.

For half the reign of the present Queen, he has represented Her Majesty in the Southern Hemisphere, and occasionally travels to her other realms when time allows. This turn began life at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in revue, and along with his rendition of former premier, Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen quickly became the basis of his one-man shows.

Jarred Dewey

Performer - 2017

Jarred Dewey trained as a teenager at Cirkidz, a youth circus based in his home town of Adelaide. In 2007 he moved to Melbourne to study contortion and swinging trapeze at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA). Jarred graduated NICA in 2010, and since 2011 he has worked extensively with Brisbane based contemporary circus company CIRCA as a full-time ensemble acrobat. During his five years with CIRCA he has toured and performed in eight different productions (including OPUS, Wunderkammer, and CLOSER) in more than 30 countries world wide. He has since worked with the sparkling La Soiree for an eight week season at Leicester Square and the iconic Australian circus company Circus Oz .

Russell Goldsmith

Production Manager / Sound Designer - 2017, 2018

Russell Goldsmith is a multiple award winning Melbourne based Sound Designer, Composer, Installation Artist, Audio Producer, Audio System Designer and Educator. He has a diverse body of work in Theatre, Dance, Film, Television, Commercial and Radio Production, Live Music and Installation Art.

In March 2009, Neil Armfieldʼs production of “Exit the King” opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. This production marked Russellʼs Broadway debut. His work on the 2007 Malthouse Theatre Company/Company B Belvoir production of “Exit the King” won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Sound Design and Composition. He was also nominated in the same category in the 2007 Green Room Awards, one of 7 Green Room Award nominations he has received. In addition to his successes as a leading theatrical Sound Designer, Russell has been involved in a number of “cross-platform” works including major commissioned works for White Night Melbourne in 2014, 2015 and 2016, “Rosieʼs Secret”, a City of Melbourne Laneway Project Commission, “Panic”, an audio installation beneath Melbourneʼs Federation Square for the Next Wave Festival, “Echo Chamber” with visual artist Sarah Edwards, and “A Packet of Seeds”, a 30 minute audio narrative for the BBC London. He also continues a strong body of work in radio, where his work continues to be recognised internationally. His sound design and composition for ABC Radio National’s adaptation of “A Woman in Berlin” was shortlisted for the 2012 Prix Italia, and won a bronze medal at the 2012 New York Festivals Radio Awards. In May 2009, Russell was nominated for a Tony Award for his Sound Design for the Broadway production of “Exit the King”.  www.russellgoldsmith.com.au

Electric Fields

Performers - 2018

Multi-award winning Electric Fields create a striking and haunting merging of living traditional culture with electronic music, bringing moments of breathtaking beauty and power to the stage. Featuring the rare and beautiful voice of Zaachariaha Fielding, who often sings in his traditional languages of the Anangu people – and the spine-chilling production of Michael Ross – Electric Fields music ranges from soulful pop, to epic-scale electronic works, through to intensely intimate story-songs.

They have toured Australia and overseas in a non-stop schedule for the past 18 months, playing in all Australian capital cities multiple times – along with invitations taking them to festivals in China, Scotland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Poland, Germany, and Malaysia. They’ve just returned from playing UK WOMAD, shows in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and closed the massive SZIGET Festival in Budapest – and the remainder of 2018 will see them playing numerous big shows in Australia.

Forde + Nicol

Designers - 2017, 2018

Forde + Nicol is a design and digital development studio based in Melbourne, Australia lead by Dominic Forde and Jonathan Nicol. At the heart of the studios process is a commitment to simple, smart and engaging design solutions. Forde + Nicol work closely with their clients to craft enduring design outcomes. The studios work has been recognised by AGDA, Tokyo Type Directors Club, Create awards and featured in numerous industry publications and books.

Toni Lalich

Performer - 2017

Toni Lalich is one of Australia’s most experienced accompanists, working with singers and instrumentalists in Melbourne for the past 25 years. She has performed in premiere venues in Europe, the UK and throughout Australia.

Toni is also a founding director of Australia’s national Indigenous opera company Short Black Opera with her partner, Yorta Yorta soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham AO. Toni has been vocal coach and company manager for Short Black Opera since 2011 and has been instrumental in the company’s five seasons of Deborah’s opera Pecan Summer, most notably at the Sydney Opera House in 2016.

Toni and Deborah have just returned from a recital tour featuring performances in Venice, Rome, Berlin, Paris and Singapore, together spreading a message of tolerance, acceptance and belonging through the universal power of music.

Keith Deverell

Video Designer - 2017

Keith Deverell is a Melbourne based video artist who also has a professional background in installation design and data visualisation. Keith’s video installations have been installed in both the Melbourne Laneways Commission, 2009, and the Melbourne International Arts Festival, 2010. In 2011 Keith’s work The Hawker’s Song, made in collaboration with Sue McCauley and two Cambodian artists Srey Bandol and Meas Sekorn, was acquired by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and was included in the SAM and Centre Pompidou exhibition, Video, An Art, A History, Videos from the Centre Pompidou and SAM collections. Recently Keith has been working on ultra slow motion portraits of local musicians that where displayed between bands during the Sugar Mountain Music Festival in 2012 and 2013 in Melbourne.

Bryony Jackson

Photographer - 2017, 2018

Bryony Jackson is a photographer who has worked across documentary, landscape and portraiture for over a decade, with many fruitful digressions in between. In recent years she has been stealthily haunting the wings of Australia’s most enigmatic art, social and performance events, where she produces stills that are anything but still. Relishing unconventional settings, complex lighting and unexpected moments, her eye is honed to distilling the velocity and quietude of performance across all disciplines.  She also photographs the occasional cute baby and corporate head shot.

Luke George

Dancer - 2017

Raised in Tasmania and based in Melbourne, Luke George creates new performance work locally and internationally/culturally, through experimental creative processes with collaborating artists. George takes daring and at times unorthodox methods to explore new intimacies and connections between audience and performers. His works have been presented extensively throughout Australia, and internationally.

Melanie Joosten

Writer, Program Essay - 2017

Melanie Joosten is a writer and social worker who lives in Melbourne. She is author of the novels Berlin Syndrome and Gravity Well, and the nonfiction essay collection A Long Time Coming: Essays on Old Age.

Melanie holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours), a Master of Arts (Editing) and a Master of Social Work. She works in social policy in the areas of seniors’ rights and elder abuse.

Melanie’s first novel, Berlin Syndrome (2011) saw her named as a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist and awarded the Kathleen Mitchell Award for Young Writers. Berlin Syndrome was released as a film in 2017 starring Teresa Palmer and Max Riemelt, with a screenplay by Shaun Grant and directed by Cate Shortland.

A Long Time Coming: Essays on Old Age was awarded the People’s Choice prize at the Nib Waverley Awards in 2016.

Dr Kathleen McGuire

Conductor - 2017

With a career spanning more than 30 years and six countries, Melbourne-born Kathleen has worked as a conductor, composer and educator leading orchestras and choirs, opera, musical theatre and ballet productions in such venues as Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. An advocate for social justice, since 1990 she has conducted myriad LGBTI arts organisations and events, including more than a decade leading the award-winning 200-voice San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. She was Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade in 2006 and two San Francisco mayors named “Kathleen McGuire Day” in her honour in 2010 and 2013. Kathleen lectures at Australian Catholic University, teaches music at two secondary schools and conducts the Star Chorale and the Tudor Choristers. As Cultural Ambassador she will lead the massed choir and orchestra at Gay Games 10 in Paris in August 2018.

www.kathleen-mcguire.com

Meow Meow

Performer - 2018

Post-post-modern diva Meow Meow has hypnotised, inspired, and terrified audiences globally with unique creations and sell-out seasons from New York’s Lincoln Center and Berlin’s Bar Jeder Vernunft to London’s West End and the Sydney Opera House.

Named One of the Top Performers of the Year by The New Yorker, the spectacular crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne has been called “Sensational” (TheTimes), “diva of the highest order” (New York Post), “The Queen of Chanson” by the Berliner Zeitung, and “a phenomenon” by the Australian press. Her award-winning solo works have been curated by David Bowie, Pina Bausch, and Mikhail Baryshnikov and numerous international arts festivals . As well as being a prolific music and theatre creator she specialises in the Weimar repertoire and French chanson, and recently appeared as Titania in Emma Rice’s revolutionary A Midsummer Night’s Dream season at Shakespeare’s Globe. She has just performed  at the Berlin Philharmonic with Pink Martini, then Brighton Festival with “Souvenir” – a fantastical song cycle she has written with composers Jherek Bischoff and August Von Trapp on the Theatre Royal, then conjured a bespoke creation for Liverpool Culture’s “Sgt Pepper at Fifty” involving the city’s brass bands, a riot and a requiem in a graveyard  and her Sleepless Beauties, incl designer Andrea Lauer.  She appears in NY in July, joins PInk Martini in Madrid and Monte Carlo,  then for the entirety of Edinburgh International Festival with her show “Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid” . December 4 is  “Meow’s Pandemonium” with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall, and Dec 20 – 31 Shakespeare’s Globe presents  “Apocalypse Meow: Crisis is Born”.

Benjamin Hancock

Dancer - 2017

Benjamin is a Melbourne dancer and choreographer. He has featured in works by Lucy Guerin, Lee Serle, Sue Healey, Prue Lang, Antony Hamilton, Martin del Amo, Narelle Benjamin, Gideon Obarzanek/Chunky Move.  Benjamin recently received a 2016 Green Room Award for Outstanding Male Dancer for The Dark Chorus Lucy Guerin Inc.

Gregory Lorenzutti

Photographer - 2017

Gregory Lorenzutti is a Brazilian-Australian artist based in Melbourne (Australia) working between the spaces of photography and dance.

As a photographer, Gregory finds and frames movement with the keen eye and kinetic sensibility of a dancer. He has worked for major dance companies and independent performers in Brazil and Australia, documenting and developing exclusive image concepts. He also travels the globe creating unique personal photographic essays, meeting people and telling their stories. His essays have been exhibited extensively in galleries and published in books and media in Brazil, Italy, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Algeria, Argentina and Australia. Gregory is recognised for his ability to extend movement beyond time and the framed space of the camera. He is interested in the relationship between movement, photography, cultural identities, gender and the history of the body, developing projects in dialogue with other artistic fields, specifically performance, blurring the borders of style and form.

Gregory holds a degree in Theatre at UniRio (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) 2004 and Digital / Analog Photography at SENAC – Rio de Janeiro 2011 and Atelie da Imagem (RJ), and specialised in contemporary narratives in photography at the International Centre of Photography in New York .

Sally McPhee

Stage Manager - 2017

Sally has been an arts producer and coordinator for over 15 years; recently including Art Centre Melbourne’s Betty Amsden Participation Program. Her passion for community participation, social heritage and welcoming, accessible public spaces led her to back to study and she graduated from RMIT’s Urban and Regional Planning (Hon) program in 2016.

Tristan Meecham

Artistic Director - 2017, 2018

Tristan Meecham is an artist who facilitates creative frameworks that enables social transformation; connecting community, audience and artists together in events that transcend the everyday. He is the Director of All The Queens Men.

All The Queens Men create spectacular theatrical and participatory arts experiences. Established with Bec Reid, All The Queens Men champion social equality by providing creative opportunities for diverse members of society, celebrating ‘everyday experts’ in exciting and technically proficient art contexts.

Recent creative actions include; The Coming Back Out Ball, a spectacular social event held at the Melbourne Town Hall celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) elders; LGBTI Elders Dance Club, a monthly social event for LGBTI elders; Congress, a citizens’ assembly in which diverse community members collaborate with professional wordsmiths to create first speeches and personal visions for our collective future; and Fun Run, a riotous performance spectacle in Tristan runs a marathon on a treadmill live on stage supported by hundreds of performers from the local community.

Tristan was Artistic Director of Give it up for Margaret: A month of philanthropic inspiration, a festival that inspired innovative arts philanthropy. GIUUFM was created in partnership with Victorian College of the Arts, Margaret Lawrence Bequest and over 20 subsidiary organisations.

Tristan was the creative lead for Going Nowhere, a sustainable international arts exchange at Arts House (2015 Green Room Award winner for Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary Performance). Most recently, he remounted The Everyday Imaginarium as part of Vitalstatistix’s Climate Century in Port Adelaide. From 2010-2014, Tristan was an Artistic Associate and the Philanthropic Manager of Aphids.

Tristan is the recipient of the VCA George Fairfax Memorial Award, British Council’s Realise Your Dream Award and the inaugural Richard Pratt Scholarship. He was the Chair of Green Room Award’s Contemporary and Experimental Performance Panel (2013-2017).

Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus

Performers -2017

The Chorus is an award winning choir with a passionate commitment to camaraderie through music. Over 25 years, our members have challenged stereotypes, stood as proud role models for those struggling with their sexuality or identity, and come from all backgrounds, ages and levels of ability. Our individual diversity is our collective strength. We strive for musical excellence and offer a supportive environment for enjoyable learning and performance and welcome all who share our vision and love of music.

Since its inception in 1990, the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus has committed itself to supporting the GLBTIQ community of Melbourne. As such, the Chorus has performed at the Stonewall commemorative service each year for the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), World AIDS Day ceremonies and services for the People Living With AIDS (PLWHA), and the fundraising Australia Day Picnic for GLBTI radio station, JOY Melbourne (94.9 FM), to name a few. The Chorus will support not for profit organisations, by donating our services for a short performance, subject to previously arranged engagements.

Cameron Menzies

Event Director - 2017, 2018

Cameron Menzies directs and creatively directs across Opera, Music Theatre, Theatre and Health Arts. He has been engaged by Opera Australia, Short Black Opera Company (Australia’s National Indigenous Opera Company), Victorian Opera, Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, Australian National Academy of Music, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Australian National Academy of Music, Deutsche Oper, Berlin, DivaOpera UK, All the Queens Men, Australian International Opera Company, Festival de Musique de Sully & Du Loire France, Sgt. Pepper @ 50 Festival Liverpool UK, Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival Arts Program and the L’Oreal Fashion Festival with the Operette Series, Royal Melbourne Hospital, 20th International AIDS Conference Melbourne, Brecan Breast Cancer Support, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Perth International Arts Festival, . He has held Artistic Director, Creative Director and Event Director positions both here in Australia and in the UK. He was the Chief Opera Director at the Opera Studio in Melbourne from 2010 – 2014 and Stagecraft Lecturer at VCA/Melbourne. Cameron is the new Artistic Director for The Classics: Opera for City of Stonnington and has been commissioned by Enlighten Festival 2018 to create and direct their closing spectacular in March. He is a Helpmann and Green Room Nominated Director and the recipient of the 2008 Bayreuth Opera Award, 2011 Berlin New music Award from Opera Foundation Australian and DAAD. He was awarded the 2016 Sydney Award from Broadway World for Best Direction for the Sydney production of Pecan Summer By Deborah Cheetham for Short Black Opera Company at the Sydney Opera House.

Miss Ellaneous and Marzi Panne

Red Carpet Hosts - 2017

Miss Ellaneous and Marzi Panne are the hilarious Top End duo responsible for the fabulous event and party company PARTY PASSPORT!

With a portfolio of over 15 pop up parties & events held over 3 states in Australia and Internationally these girls know how to party!

This year PARTY PASSPORT  took away a commendation award for the NT Mardi Gras float celebrating the Tiwi Islander Sista during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Logan Mucha

Film Maker - 2017, 2018

Logan Mucha is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with a passion for exploring human rights issues. His latest work includes a short documentary for ABC’s ‘Love Bites’ and is currently in production on a City of Melbourne supported short documentary exploring Melbourne’s queer histories. His previous films have screened abroad at film festivals and on TV and he’s twice won Best Australian Short at the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival.

Logan graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in 2012 and went on to work with production company @Radical.Media in Sydney and New York. He now works for The Sweet Shop, directing content for clients including Tourism Western Australia and Deakin University. Logan is currently developing his most ambitious screen-based project ‘Dark Tide’, with support from Creative Victoria.

Anna Pidgeon

Stage Manager - 2017, 2018

With a focus on Stage and Production Management, Anna is passionate about facilitating work that challenges and inspires people and considers herself lucky to have been able to do this with companies of all sizes including Circus Oz, Die Roten Punkte, Arena Theatre, Dislocate, Dark Mofo and Legs on the Wall.

POW Circus

Performers - 2017

POW Circus began in 1995 when Women’s Circus member Jean Taylor, assisted by circus trainers, conducted a 6 week series of workshops in circus skills for women over 40. These workshops culminated in a performance – Act Your Age. Afterwards, members decided to continue as an autonomous group and became the Performing Older Women’s (POW) Circus.

POW is run as a collective of women, currently aged between 46 and 68 years, who train in circus skills. POW members participated in small performances such as the 2016 White Night: Circus Circus cabaret, and Midsumma’s Park Lounge II at Werribee.

 

In the words of a young audience member watching performers on trapeze, “I didn’t know grandmas could do that!”

Bec Reid

Choreographer / Performer / Producer - 2017, 2018

Bec is an Australian based performer, producer, director, choreographer and engagement specialist.  Bec encourages people to see their world in new ways through highly physical, participatory, practical, collaborative and celebratory actions.  For over 15 years, Bec has passionately worked in the space where professional artists and communities of interest meet; collaborating with communities and artists nationally and internationally. Together with Tristan Meecham, Bec leads All The Queens Men, is a founding member of Everybody Now! with Kate McDonald and Ian Pidd and regularly collaborates with acclaimed artists Madeline Flynn and Tim Humphrey. In 2017-18, Bec is a Fellowship recipient from the Australia Council for the Arts. Bec has continually served on arts boards and regularly mentors young and emerging artists formally and informally. Bec’s true loves are Staffordshire Bull Terriers and dancing.

Nick Roux

VJ - 2017

Nick Roux is an artist working in sound and video. As a composer and/or system designer he has worked with All The Queens Men, Luke George, Chunky Move, Aphids, Nicola Gunn, Sisters Grimm, Speak Percussion, Antony Hamilton Projects, Lucy Guerin Inc., Ashley Dyer, Torque Show, Dance North, Tanja Beer, Tamara Saulwick, TasDance, Gabrielle Nankivell, J.R. Brennan and Arts House.

Together with real-time motion graphics developer Frieder Weiss, Nick designed and programmed the large scale real-time video graphics system for ‘KING KONG’ the musical. Nick has also created video works for Global Creatures, Chunky Move, Take That, Draculas, Mercedes Benz, NYID, Yellow Wheel and Next Wave Festival. His short film ‘HOMEMADE’ was selected for Flickerfest International Short Film Festival in 2009, and ‘THE PALINDROMIST’ a short dance film was selected for Cinedans Dance film Festival in the Netherlands in 2011.

James Shannon

Dancer - 2017

James is a Melbourne-based dance artist who has toured and performed for Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin, Opera Australia, The Production Company, tasdance, All the Queens Men, and Cadi McCarthy company.   He is currently working in Education teaching VCE dance, taking dance workshops and leading professional development seminars for Victorian teachers and students.

Ben Starick

Publicist - 2017, 2018

Ben Starick is the director of Starling Communications – consultants in marketing, communications, publicity, media relations, event management, project management and graphic design. A graduate in public relations from RMIT University, Ben has worked with many organisations in the arts and culture sector offering services ranging from higher level strategic marketing and communications advice and planning to implementing comprehensive media and publicity strategies and campaigns. Ben is a past board member of Writers Victoria (as deputy chair) and Theatre Works. Ben has completed projects with the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Regional Arts Victoria, State Library Victoria, Melbourne Museum, VicHealth, City of Melbourne, City of Maribyrnong, City of Greater Dandenong, Victoria University, La Trobe University, Circus Oz, Arts House, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, British Council Australia, Back to Back Theatre, Djuki Mala, ILBIJERRI, fortyfivedownstairs, Gertrude Contemporary, Arts West, Footscray Community Arts Centre, The SUBSTATION, The Torch, Outer Urban Projects, Chamber Made Opera, Australian Art Orchestra, Australian Tapestry Workshop, Dance Massive and the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards.

Rockie Stone

POW Choreographer - 2017

Rockie Stone is a physical performer and multi award winning contemporary theatre maker with a drive to create art with circus bodies. As much at home hand-standing on fellow acrobats or balancing on a tower of chairs as she is hanging on ropes and trapezes, she has performed all over the world with renown companies such as Circa, Circus Oz, and Finucane & Smith and directed for Slipstream Circus and Westside Circus. Co-founder with Vincent van Berkel of award winning Company Here and Now, the pair have so far toured their work to Edinburgh, Italy, South Korea, New Zealand, most Australian capital cities and regional Victoria in its short 2 year life. For her independent collaborations she has attracted multiple awards and nominations including “Best Circus and Physical Theatre” in both Adelaide Fringe and Perth Fringe World (Fright or Flight – 3 is a Crowd Ensemble); Total Theatre Award nominations – UK (Fright or Flight – 2013; Perhaps Hope – 2016); and nominations for two Greenroom Awards (2015) – Best Performer in an Experimental & Contemporary Performance; and Best Innovation in Circus and Physical Theatre.

Sue Thomson

Documentary Film Maker - 2017

Sue started her film career working on the first two Public Television Broadcasts out of the Open Channel studios in Fitzroy. She went on to produced two Televised Galas for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – Channel 9 and Network 7, she produced two Comedy Short Film Festivals for FOXTEL and the one hour documentary Class Clowns for Network Ten.

Sue wrote and directed the popular documentary/drama Boys and Balls starring Roy & HG for ABC1 She then directed The Fifth Set, ABC1 and The Last Great Amateurs, starring Magda Szubanski for ABC1

Sue spent 3 years on her feature length documentary, Tempest at the Drop-in a film about a group of people with serious mental health issues who perform Shakespeare’s play The Tempest – Tempest at the Drop-in, narrated by Eric Bana, screened as part of the MENTAL AS initiative on ABC1 in 2014 and again in ’15,’16 and 2017

In 2014 Sue directed and produced Talking Turkey a 1hr documentary starring Brian Nankervis and Colin Lane. In 2016 Sue was the Executive Producer on 4 x30min specials called the Comedy Roadshow for SBS 2. Currently Sue is working on The Beach House Years, a television drama series and directing the wonderful The Coming Back Out Ball Documentary.

Lois Weaver

Performer - 2017

Lois Weaver is an artist, activist and part time professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary, University of London. She was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theater, WOW and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop in London. She has been a writer, director and performer with Peggy Shaw and Split Britches since 1980. Recent work includes: Miss America (2008); Lost Lounge (2009) and RUFF (2012). Split Britches’ collection of scripts, Split Britches Feminist Performance/Lesbian Practice, edited by Sue Ellen Case, won the 1997 Lambda Literary Award for Drama. In 2012, Split Britches was presented with the Edwin Booth Award by City University of New York in honor of their outstanding contribution to the New York City/American Theater and Performance Community. Her experiments in performance as a means of public engagement (publicaddresssystems.org) include the Long Table, the Library of Performing Rights, the FeMUSEm and her facilitating persona, Tammy WhyNot. Tammy collaborated with senior centers in NYC on What Tammy Needs To Know About Getting Old and Having Sex which premiered at La MaMa ETC,  NYC in November 2014. Lois was named a Senior Fellow by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in 2014. She is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and a Wellcome Trust Engaging Science Fellow for 2016-18.

Andrew Westle

Maître d / Community Engagement - 2017, 2018

Andrew Westle is passionate about gender equality, social justice and making art accessible to everyone. His work defies boundaries and includes research, evaluation, writing, theatre making, public health and community engagement. His work across disciplines, including sexuality and health research with a specific focus on LGBTIQ health and gender equality. Always questioning the status quo, Andrew is interested in creating spaces for challenging conversations where ideas inspire dialogue, action and engagement.  In 2018, Andrew launched the biggest research project to date in gender equality in Australian dance with a landmark report ‘Turning Pointe’.

Andrew is currently working with Manchester International Festival as a Project Manager in the Creative Engagement team.  As a writer, he was awarded a fellowship at Writers Victoria in 2016 and was a writer in resident for the 2016 Next Wave Festival. Andrew runs the podcast Delving into Dance with an international listenership of over 15, 000 people.  Andrew currently works between Australia and the UK.

As a writer, he was awarded a fellowship at Writers Victoria in 2016 and was a writer in resident for the 2016 Next Wave Festival. His latest project is his podcast Delving into Dance  that present a wide range of perspectives about dance, including interviews with Deborah Jowitt, Stephanie Lake and Gideon Obarzanek. The pilot season had a listenership of over 4000.

James Welsby

Dancer - 2017

James is a performer and choreographer with a decade of professional experience in contemporary dance and cabaret. He has toured the world as a performer in GLORY BOX and BRIEFS. James is the founder and artistic director of cult-hit drag cabaret YUMMY, which has presented numerous sold-out productions in Melbourne and overseas.