Lead Artist
ROSIE DENNIS
ROSIE DENNIS
Rosie Dennis is
Artistic Director of Urban Theatre Projects, NSW. Prior to joining UTP in 2012
Rosie worked as a freelance artist across a range of roles including performer,
curator and writer. During this time her work was presented at more than 25 festivals
across Central Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Rosie is
interested in making work that has universality and a strong connection with
the everyday. She has curated
award-winning participatory art events within entire neighbourhoods, backyards,
with families, within schools, supermarkets and shopping malls in metropolitan
and regional Australia. Her practice places high priority on unpacking the artistic
process for people encountering contemporary art for the first time, and is
driven by human relationships, placing conversation with everyday people at the
heart of every project.
Some of her major
works include: Quietly Collapsed, Fraudulent Behaviour, Life As We Know It,
Downtown, Driven to New Pastures, and MINTO: LIVE. Most recently she made My
Radio Heart, a co-commission between UTP and NORPA, Lismore.
URBANTHEATRE.COM.AUResident Artists
ALICIA MIN HARVIE
Alicia is an emerging dancer/choreographer with a undergraduate degree in dance performance and Christian theology. Recently Alicia was the recipient of The Mill’s first choreographic award and residency in which she received a four-week development under mentorship of Kate Champion. This opportunity enabled Alicia to produce a short work called small world which aims to reflect the tension of modern living particularly in the areas of overconsumption verses lowering our carbon footprint.
ALYSHA HERRMANN
Alysha Herrmann is a proud parent, regional artist and advocate exploring performance and civic action to inspire individuals and communities to connect, reclaim and reinterpret their personal stories. As an artist and maker Alysha is a poet, performer, writer and cultural producer and the current Creative Producer of ExpressWay Arts. Alysha is also a member of Urban Myth Theatre Company’s 2014 Senior Ensemble and creating work as part of the Paper Ensemble Collective. Examples of recent work include Sing Me Your Sorrow, an interactive installation work exploring sorrow and resilience and Ben Thomas, I Love You, published by Currency Press as part of The Voices Project and performed by Australian Theatre for Young People as part of The One Sure Thing. Alysha also blogs about all things creative at http://alyshaherrmann.wordpress.com and tweets mini poems as @lylyee on Twitter.
ASHTON MALCOLM
Ashton Malcolm is an actor, devisor and theatre-maker. A graduate of the Flinders University Drama Centre, Ashton has worked with many companies both locally and internationally, including Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts and the Manhattan Shakespeare Project. She has just completed the first tour of Trouble and Strife- a play exploring the lives of Australian women on the homefront in WW1, which she co-wrote and devised with Lydia Nicholson. Later in the year, Ashton will return to Vitalstatistix as a collaborator and perfomer in David Williams’ new work, Quiet Faith. She will also feature as Desdemona in STCSA’s Othello. Ashton recently started The Year That Is, a blog project that uses daily drawings to explore vulnerability and sense of self.
EDWIN KEMP ATTRILL
Edwin Kemp Attrill is a South Australian theatre director and producer. He is the former Artistic Director of the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild (2011-2012) and the current Company Producer (2012-present) and former Artistic Director (2007-2010) of ActNow Theatre. As a community arts practitioner, Edwin has worked with people with disabilities, prisoners, refugees and migrants. He holds a diploma in Theatre Arts through Victoria University, trained in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques through Headlines Theatre in Vancouver, Canada, and was the 2013 recipient of the Channel 9 Young Achievers Award for Career Leadership.
EMILY MCMAHON
Emily McMahon is an actor, theatre maker, and an enthusiastic learner. She has completed an Advanced Diploma of Arts (Acting), a Diploma of Sustainability, and a course in Carbon Accounting. Emily has previously produced two shows, a one-woman show for the 2009 Adelaide Fringe Festival, and Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor with Accidental Productions in the same year. Recently she performed in This Old Man Comes Rolling Home by Dorothy Hewett, and Lovers and Other Strangers with Werdna Productions for the Adelaide Fringe.
Emily is one of the founding members of standalone power company Off-Grid Energy Australia, and is a strong renewable energy advocate. She is particularly interested in how to increase awareness of climate change and sustainability, and how to affect positive social change using theatre.
JOHN WILLANSKI
John Flanagan Willanski is married with a young daughter. He lives in Adelaide, where he works as an illustrator and mixed media artist. John has a background in both graphic design and storytelling. His work encompasses broad-ranging themes including environmentalism and ecology, accessibility, social inclusion and science. John believes that art is about communication and making connections between people. Art moves people, brings them joy, makes them think, but most of all art is fun.
JOSEPHINE WERE
Josephine Were is a performer and theatre-maker based in Adelaide. She writes, performs live, and works with audio storytelling site specifically. Josephine trained in acting at The Adelaide College of the Arts and with the massive idiot Philippe Gaulier. She has recently completed her MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Locally, as an actor, she has performed with the STCSA, Vitals and in independent theatre with her own work. Most recently she made Then & Now & Then, an audio performance through an industrial estate for the 2014 Adelaide Fringe. In October she will bring Three Wishes, a new work that will question the future of Australia through wish making, to Crack Theatre festival, as part of the Setting Stages initiative.
MEG WILSON
Meg Wilson is an
Adelaide based artist working with textiles and installation. Her practice responds to classic horror/thriller/mystery genre films, play scripts and novels. Her seemingly mundane and generally functionless objects stimulate complex responses such as confusion, empathy, horror, and wonder. Wilson cites her visual art practice and theatre prop and set design practice (Restless
Dance and Slingsby) as mutually influential. Recent exhibitions have been held at Constance ARI (TAS); Mechanical Gallery (SA); Tooth and Nail (SA); Fontanelle (SA); and FELTspace public art projects. Wilson is a co-director of FELTspace ARI in Adelaide.
REBECCA MESTON
Rebecca is a writer and theatre maker. Trained in Performance Studies at Sydney Uni, she’s had her work performed at PACT, Metro
Arts, This is Not Art, Adelaide Fringe, PlayLab and Brisbane Festival and has taught young people at Canberra Youth Theatre and Backbone Youth Arts.
In 2007 she was the co-creator of the show The Reunion, staged at the Sue Benner Theatre, which received critical acclaim. She also devised, wrote and
directed Click Tease, Suburban Boulevard (with collaborator Daniel Evans) and Tracksuit Girl and in 2012
developed Fantasy Project Gary for Format Festival – inspired by the Amsterdam red-light district, classic clowning and 1980’s game show A Perfect Match.
Rebecca’s also worked as a festival programmer, an
arts writer and as a producer for the Australian Theatre Forum (2011).
SUSIE SKINNER
Project Partners
VITALSTATISTIX (South Australia)
performance, projects, residencies
Vitalstatistix (Vitals) is a boutique producer and presenter of contemporary theatre and interdisciplinary arts projects. We produce new Australian performance and live art that is provocative, distinctive and informed.
Vitals values creative processes that encompass collaboration and cultural research. We develop partnerships with independent creative teams who desire to work with us over several years in a stimulating and supportive environment. Each year, Vitals presents and develops new work, residencies, community-based projects, events, collaborations with like-minded makers and presenters, and industry initiatives for South Australian artists. Vitals works from a feminist perspective and has a proud and continuing tradition of supporting women artists.
Vitals is based at the heritage-listed Waterside Workers Hall in Port Adelaide, South Australia, a place with a strong cultural history that informs our production of highly diverse, often political work.
URBAN THEATRE PROJECTS (New South Wales)
Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) is an award winning theatre company based at Bankstown Arts Centre. UTP are driven to tell stories that may otherwise not be told – stories that are full of humanity and that find the universal in the personal. UTP are passionate about finding different voices to tell these stories – voices of people who might not otherwise be heard. We are inspired to find new ways to shape these stories into theatre that challenges and provokes audiences to consider life from a different perspective.
UTP draws upon a 30-year lineage of distinctive new theatre works based on a process of conversation between contemporary theatre practice and diverse communities. Stories and images of contemporary life are created in collaboration with teams of artists from a range of artistic practices and cultural backgrounds. In 2002, UTP was awarded the Sidney Myer Award in recognition of the company’s outstanding contribution to Australian theatre.
Susie Skinner is a storyteller
who works with theatre and music. A graduate of Flinders Drama Centre, Susie
was a guest at the 5th International Women’s Playwrights Conference
2000 in Athens. Bass player with Problem Pony, a country/folk/blues 4-piece,
Susie performed at the 2005 Adelaide Cabaret Festival and 2006 National Folk
Festival. She was the Artistic Director of D’faces of youth arts in
Whyalla, South Australia from 2007 to 2010. A Wake - Susie’s first solo
live art work premiering at Kumuwuki, The 2012 National Regional Arts
Conference in Goolwa. Susie is currently a mentor for Wet Paint, a
young peoples theatre project in Goolwa. She has just co directed and devised Lakes
Angel with Jessica Foster for the Salt Water Festival funded through
Country Arts SA Regional Places.
Project Partners
VITALSTATISTIX (South Australia)
performance, projects, residencies
Vitalstatistix (Vitals) is a boutique producer and presenter of contemporary theatre and interdisciplinary arts projects. We produce new Australian performance and live art that is provocative, distinctive and informed.
Vitals values creative processes that encompass collaboration and cultural research. We develop partnerships with independent creative teams who desire to work with us over several years in a stimulating and supportive environment. Each year, Vitals presents and develops new work, residencies, community-based projects, events, collaborations with like-minded makers and presenters, and industry initiatives for South Australian artists. Vitals works from a feminist perspective and has a proud and continuing tradition of supporting women artists.
Vitals is based at the heritage-listed Waterside Workers Hall in Port Adelaide, South Australia, a place with a strong cultural history that informs our production of highly diverse, often political work.
URBAN THEATRE PROJECTS (New South Wales)
Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) is an award winning theatre company based at Bankstown Arts Centre. UTP are driven to tell stories that may otherwise not be told – stories that are full of humanity and that find the universal in the personal. UTP are passionate about finding different voices to tell these stories – voices of people who might not otherwise be heard. We are inspired to find new ways to shape these stories into theatre that challenges and provokes audiences to consider life from a different perspective.
UTP draws upon a 30-year lineage of distinctive new theatre works based on a process of conversation between contemporary theatre practice and diverse communities. Stories and images of contemporary life are created in collaboration with teams of artists from a range of artistic practices and cultural backgrounds. In 2002, UTP was awarded the Sidney Myer Award in recognition of the company’s outstanding contribution to Australian theatre.
