Collaboration AP
COLLABORATION: An SNS Roundtable Series
IABA Asia Pacific June 23, 2017
The third installation of our Collaboration series will take place Friday, June 23rd at "Life Narratives in Troubled Times" (Central Queensland University, Noosa Campus, Noosaville)
Panel members: Bambi Ward and Phillip Kavanagh
Panel moderator: Emma Maguire and Melanie Pryor
ABSTRACTS
Phillip Kavanagh
"Theatre and/as Collaboration"
Theatre, as an art form, is built on collaboration. Perhaps the most central relationship when it comes to meaning making is between a playwright and a director. I’m interested in exploring the artistic relationship I have built with director Nescha Jelk across multiple projects. While writers are often seen as the author of a text, and directors of a production, Nescha and I are an example of a collaboration where these distinctions are blurred. Despite very clear roles in the program notes, we share the authorship of both text and production, and in our five years of working together, we have navigated through the precarious terrain of attempting to honour our own artistic voices while giving space for each other’s. Along the way, we’ve developed a process, an aesthetic, an ethos, a theatre company, and a body of work that traces our shared thinking on the state of the world.
Bambi Ward
"Balancing inner and outer collaborators"
What happens when a memoirist wants to write about a family secret involving identity? I will discuss the inner tension between the part of me that felt guilty about betraying my family if I broke the silence, and the part of me that felt the price of keeping silent was too great. It was only when these two parts within me could collaborate that I felt free to write my memoir. The support I received by working with an art therapist helped me reach that point. I will outline these inner and outer collaborations, and point out how both were needed in my case. I also collaborated with a transcriber who transformed 20 hours of oral history interviews I conducted on my mother. I will briefly describe the importance of the transcriber-interviewer relationship in this collaboration if time permits.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Phillip Kavanagh
is a playwright based between Adelaide and Sydney. He completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Flinders University, as well as a Graduate Diploma of Dramatic Art (Playwriting) at NIDA. He has recently commenced a PhD at Flinders University. Phillip has been awarded the Patrick White Playwrights' Award, Jill Blewett Playwright's Award, STCSA Young Playwrights Award, and the Colin Thiele Creative Writing Scholarship. His plays include Jesikah
(STCSA), Deluge
(Tiny Bricks/Brink/Adelaide Festival), Replay
(Griffin) and a new adaptation of Moliére’s Tartuffe
(Brink/STCSA). He is one half of independent theatre company Tiny Bricks, along with director Nescha Jelk.
Bambi Wardis a PhD student in creative writing at CQUniversity. She has a background in General Practice, Medical Education and Oral History, and is writing a memoir of her spiritual journey as part of the PhD. She works as a Senior Medical Educator for doctors training to be GPs in the Northern Territory, and has a special interest in Indigenous health and culture.