“Peter Fraser makes performances based on the sensations of the body. The focus is not on psychology or choreography but on exploring the body as an internal environment inside a surrounding environment. He performers as an improviser, in choreographed performance, site specific performance and occasionally in video and theatre.

Peter’s work draws on a performance training called ‘Bodyweather’ developed by the legendary butoh dancer Min Tanaka, and used, in Australia, by De Quincey Co with whom Peter has often performed (http://dequinceyco.net/category/performances). Examples of Peter’s work can be seen at https://vimeo.com/user11525528 Peter is completing an MA in performance that will include the Darebin pop up shop window installation/performance based on having seen a lizard confined in a pet shop.

Filmmaker, Lolanthe Lezzi is a multi-disciplinary artist, film editor and graphic designer based in Melbourne. She has a Masters of Fine Arts, Monash. Her work commonly explores themes of Absurdism and the Outsider – often with humour. She has exhibited, film, photographs and installations in many group or individual exhibitions, including at Monash University, Seventh Gallery, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Barcelona, Launceston and the Mornington Peninsula”.

For further information please contact Sarah Poole on 0407 813 776. The actual film will be posted when it has been edited – in a few weeks time.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.420086268080543.1073741825.348248115264359&type=1

“Those are some of the issues raised by Australian company version 1.0 in this verbatim show that offers a collage of the experiences of Australians who have been left behind by the disappeared. Making its European premiere as part of the Brighton festival, the hour-long static show is delivered by two actors – Irving Gregory and Yana Taylor, both superb – who sit facing the audience. The piece displays a frozen quality, its form mirroring the emotional state of those talking about the people they love, there one day and gone the next.“ **** Lyn Gardener, The Guardian, UK. Read more here

“pungent, powerful and thought provoking” Mary Kalmus, The Brighton Argus, UK. Read more here

“the content of The Disappearances Project is indeed bleak and beautiful. Bleak in its steadfast commitment to illustrating the hardship of the people’s experiences and beautiful in its simple unadorned delivery by its two performers” **** Hannah Rowlands, The Public Reviews, UK. Read more here

“The stark, filmic backdrop of travel through deserted streets by night echoed the sense of constant search for someone who wasn’t there and the discordant soundtrack added to the feeling of despair and malaise. It was powerful and deeply moving.” ***** Jenni Davidson, The Latest, UK. Read more here.

“They speak verbatim-style, conveying a sense of both raw communication and heroic composure, over the fluctuating tensions of Paul Prestipino’s bleak industrial sound-track” ***** Bella Todd, The Stage, UK. Read more here.

Related Links

• School of English, Communications and Performance Studies
• Theatre and Performance

From to October, he will spend six weeks as a Visiting Professor in the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.  These residencies will enable Will to complete a manuscript for his forthcoming book, “Emplacing Happiness: Community, the Self, and Performance in the Philippines” in two of the most exciting research environments in the world for scholars in his field

Related Links

• William Peterson
• School of English, Communications and Performance Studies
• Theatre and Performance

In 2011/12 she worked as a dramaturg with physical theatre company, Strings Attached, Shopfront’s Arts Lab emerging artists and as an Australia Council JUMP mentor. She participated in Time_Place_Space 4 hybrid arts lab, chaired Western Sydney’s community-engaged company, Urban Theatre Projects (1998-2003), returning to perform in UTP’s site-specific piece for the Sydney Festival, The Last Highway (2008).

As one of makers of version 1.0′s multi-media and documentary theatre works since 2000, Yana worked as performance dramaturg on CMI [A Certain Maritime Incident] (2004), The Wages of Spin (2005) andThis kind of ruckus (2010); as devisor/performer in Deeply offensive and utterly untrue (2007) and The Table of Knowledge (2011-12).

In 2011 she conceived, performed in and created the screen work for the critically acclaimed performance installation, The Disappearances Project, which has continued to tour nationally and is currently programmed in the UK’s Brighton Festival this year.  Also, The Disappearances Project is being re-imagined and produced by version 1.0 for broadcast on ABC radio.  Her Phd research (Usyd) focused on the role body-based training practice played in the collaborative devising of new works by seminal contemporary performance groups in Australia. 

She designed curricula and lectured in performance-making, actor education, movement, theatre theory and history at UWS, Nepean’s performance degree, at Macquarie University and taught in the Australian Film Television and Radio School’s post-graduate program for teachers of creative practice in higher education.

Chris Bunworth, Drew Tingwell and Ezra Bix. Boy Out of the Country by Felix Nobis

Boy Out of the Country a play in verse by Felix Nobis was awarded the R. E. Ross Trust Script Development Award in 2010. This week saw two rehearsed readings of this play at popular inner city venue forty-five downstairs and at the Drama Theatre of Monash University.

Written in verse, the play explores ways in which story can be told through poetic devices; it examines how
rhyme and rhythm not only decorate, but can be employed to motivate plot.

Directed by Felix Nobis, the reading featured Ezra bix, Nadine Garner, Drew Tingwell, Chris Bunworth and Alison Richards.

Felix Nobis is a lecturer in Theatre and Performance and has worked for the Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir St Theatre, Q Theatre and Red Stitch. 

The Storytelling Project (i)
A research project undertaken by Dr. Felix Nobis

A research project that examines the stories of our community. In The Storytelling Project (i), Monash University International students engage in a 6 week workshop and share stories of their past and present. 

This is the first part of a three stage storytelling project created by CTP staff member, performer and researcher Felix Nobis.  On Thursday 9th May, join us for an evening of shared cultures, histories and memories and an opportunity to hear just a few of the thousands of stories that make up the Monash international student community.

This project is supported by the Monash Academy of Performing Arts.

For more information, click here or contact Felix.Nobis@monash.edu directly.

Felix Nobis is a lecturer in Theatre and Performance and has worked for the Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir St Theatre, Q Theatre and Red Stitch. 

Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths will play the lead role of Alex in Wild Surmise. Photo: Garth Oriander

Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths will play the lead role of Alex in Wild Surmise. Photo: Garth Oriander

A dramatic adaptation of a verse novel by one of Australia’s most inventive poets will feature a Monash University staff member in the lead role.

Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths from the Monash Department of Theatre and Performance will play Alex in the first adaptation of Dorothy Porter’s Wild Surmise, to be performed at the Malthouse Theatre.

Dr Griffiths, a great fan of Porter’s work, said she was curious about the feasibility of adapting Wild Surmise for the stage so was delighted when the late poet’s partner, Andrea Goldsmith, allowed her the adaptation rights.

“Adapting the work has allowed me to explore the performativity of poetry when embodied in the theatre,” Dr Griffiths said.

“I took the idea to Malthouse Artistic Director Marion Potts. Marion and I had worked together on my ARC Linkage project, Sappho…in 9 fragments, which she directed in 2010. After that very enjoyable and fruitful collaboration – again about the performative possibilities of poetry – it seemed that this was a natural progression for us both.”

Wild Surmise is a compilation of poems chronicling the life and experiences of astronomer Alex Leefson (played by Dr Griffiths) and her literary-loving husband, Daniel (Humphrey Bower).

Dr Griffiths is looking forward to using her acting muscles.

“I’ve something of a fascination with female astronomers after writing a play about the ancient astronomer Hypatia. Alex is no Hypatia: she’s deeply flawed and unwittingly selfish but I suppose I like her restless yearning for what is beyond life as we know it,” Dr Griffiths said.

Away from the theatre, Dr Griffiths is about to record her play about Hypatia for Radio National, a project supported by Monash Academy of Performing Arts through its Three for Free series.

“It is great to see how the University’s practice research culture fosters projects that can have a wider dissemination to the general public. For academia it’s a new – and I think very exciting – way of looking at how and what academics can ‘publish’,” Dr Griffiths said.

“For me, practice-based research and traditional scholarship go hand in hand. That’s the terrific thing about practice research in the university context – we can find ways of braiding together different methodologies that still retain rigour. Monash has been incredibly supportive in facilitating that kind of research.”

Dr Jane Montgomery Griffiths will star in Wild Surmise at the Beckett Theatre, The Malthouse from 9 November until 2 December, with opening night on Thursday 15 November.

A little piece for her sister, by Jane Montgomery Griffiths, re-imagines the stories of Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. Jane juxtaposes everyday domesticity with mythic excesses to thrilling effect. Perceptive, precise, and beautifully structured.

Jane has been invited to participate in PlayWriting Australia’s 2012 National Script Workshop.  This is a prestigious award for playwrights, and the Playwriting Australia invitation is a very coveted additional prize, giving her the chance to disseminate her research at a national level with industry professionals.