Event Type: Kid Friendly

Jane Flowers

Jane Flowers is an award winning Australian artist who specialises in dramatic oils on canvas of nature, the ocean and the outback. Her unique interpretations create striking artwork that have gained a strong following among art lovers, collectors and interior designers. The landscapes and seascapes that Flowers creates have the ability to make a room come to life by subtlely transforming the natural beauty of the outdoors into a stunning interior space. Flowers draws inspiration from her regular travels to capture the essence of a time and place. A keen yachtswoman, diver, beachcomber and adventurer, Flowers is passionate about the beauty of nature and the natural environment. She has been a professional artist for 30 years following careers in teaching, advertising and graphic design.

Justine Wake

Justine Wake is from Meanjin, Queensland and her recent Arts Residency at Salamanca Arts Centre has focussed on harvesting the crops grown from seeds planted over the past few years of her family life and work as a psychotherapist.

The majority of Justine’s art making is a response to ideas and experiences that run through her mind as she goes about daily life. In these reflections, she is often interested in the experience of being ‘betwixt and between’ – who do we become when we are in a space that has no context or a space that exists only due to being between two different states.

“I am in middle age now, an interesting kind of in between time. As a psychotherapist I also spend a lot of my working life in this space with people- supporting emergence from unwelcome or uncomfortable places in between. I am intuitively and also professionally comfortable inhabiting this realm. To explore this in my imagery, I am drawn to the metaphorical richness of colour, the botanical world, animals and the elements.”
– Justine Wake

Hera Fox 

Hera is a playwright, and circus & cabaret creator based in nipaluna (Hobart). Having grown up in the Huon Valley starting in community musicals, they have had a varied career in burlesque and drag to circus and acrobatics. Now they have found their voice as a transgender woman returning to song and cabaret creating work for and by transgender people. Her plays have endeavored to assist in changing the culture of the live performing arts, to be more inclusive, and to not take itself too seriously. She has a tendency to write about love, lust, and loss, with a style reflecting reactions of your various ex partners.

They are the founder and artistic director of QT Cabaret, a space for transgender and gender queer performers to trial new cabaret and circus work, which won Artfully Queers unifying voice award 2019. Hera is also the winner of 2020’s Out For Australia Community Champion award.

Genevieve Butler | Director

Director- Genevieve Butler is a bilingual performance artist who uses Bouffon, Drag, Circus, and physical comedy to examine the significance of social masks within theatrical frameworks.  Her artistic practice focuses on how audiences connect/relate universally to colloquial stories.

She is an actor, writer, director, circus performer, mask maker, video editor and teacher of circus fundamentals, mask play and devising. She has toured numerous Fringe and Arts Festivals around Australia, and worked with theatre companies across Australia, Italy and Belgium. She has been a working artist for over 10years   

Genevieve has a diploma in Commedia dell’Arte (FAVA, Italy) and Movement Analysis and Theatre Creation (Lassad, Belgium)— and a bachelors in Theatre (QUT).

Fithawit Hadgu | Actor

Fithawit recently migrated to Australia from Eretria. Since arriving Fithawit has been involved with Students Against Racism (SAR). Through SAR Fithawit has shared her personal story about how she came to Tasmania in schools and workplaces, revealing the realities of what refugees and new arrivals face when they come to this country. Last year Fithawit made her mainstage debut at the Peacock Theatre performing in The Story Behind My Suitcase. Fithawit received a scholarship from Salamanca Arts Centre to attend The Process drama workshops with Ben Winspear, Davina Wright and Lucien Simon.

Takani Clark | Actor

Emerging filmmaker, performer, artist Takani Clark is a professional dabbler and multidisciplinary creative from lutruwita, exploring and engaging with mediums of filmmaking, visual art and performance. As a First Nations woman, raised within the staunch palawa community, Takani feels a deep responsibility to protect and document the island and its cultural identity and diversity, both environmentally and socially. As a storyteller she strives to use her creative voice to deepen our understanding of each other, the natural world and ourselves. Takani believes that diversity is an integral part of her creative practice, striving to collaborate with people from different artistic practices, any background and all walks of life.

Bailey Jackson | Actor

Bailey is a Hobartian Thespian whose hit and miss performances will keep you guessing right until the very end — is this entertainment at its finest or is it a train wreck you can’t look away from? After more than a decade in Tasmanian theatre, still he isn’t sure. Nonetheless, Bailey appreciates Salamanca Arts Centre for rolling the dice and he hopes you enjoy the show.

Jackson Davis | Lighting Designer

Jackson Davis is a theatre maker, writer and performer based in Hobart. Since graduating with Honours from the University of Wollongong in 2012, Jackson has co-founded re:group performance collective and collaborates on new performance works with an emphasis on popular culture and videography. His theatre credits include Lost Boys (Performer, Merrigong Theatre Company, 2018), Route Dash Niner Part 1 & 2 (Director, Merrigong Theatre Company 2016-2017), Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo (Puppeteer, Japan Tour, 2016-2018), Conspiracies (Director, Shopfront, 2017) and LOVELY (Director, PACT, 2014).

Davina Wright

Davina Wright is a site-specific artist currently living in nipaluna/Hobart. 

She makes site specific, nonlinear and immersive theatre that looks at loneliness, suburbia, violence and feminism. She wrote and directed This is Grayson; a performance for audience 8+ with her collective Gold Satino. It received four Green Room Award Nominations in the Contemporary and Experimental Performance panel and received the awards for Innovation in Site Responsive Performance and Performance for Young Audiences.

Risa Muramatsu Ray

Risa began her dancing career at an early age,  studying both classical and modern ballet and receiving numerous awards at the national competition level. In 2006 she entered the Japan Women’s College of Physical Education, home to some of Japan’s rhythmic sports  gymnastics olympic medal winners, where she majored in contemporary dance and poured her creative energies into choreography, stage production and dramatic composition while performing as a contemporary dancer in Tokyo.  

Complimenting her work in the contemporary sphere, Risa has also  

performed regularly at numerous music festivals and many of Tokyo’s  most famous clubs, as well as contributing her skills in event production  and choreography to many artists both in Japan and on the international stage. Now Risa is based in Tasmania and she is enjoying creating her  works inspired by Tasmanian nature.

Adie Delaney 

Adie began her circus career at NICA in 2004. After graduating she left Australia to Europe to join the UK’s largest touring contemporary circus company NoFitState. Over 8 years she performed swinging and flying trapeze, hula hoops, fire, acrobatics, trampolining, roller skating etc. Adie also spent two years with Cie Oncore’s flying trapeze show ‘Une Drole de Maison’ flexing her clowning muscles, and among other various events performed a season with La Clique at Edinburgh Fringe.

Andy Vagg

Andy Vagg is an artist, designer, writer, poet and performer. His practice explores the qualities and limitations of contemporary existence, and how the choices we make inherently effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. Using post-consumer objects and materials, he creates work in social contexts, to activate spaces to form literal and metaphorical platforms for the development of ideas to encourage positive social change. His performances explore the role of religion, liturgy and ritual in a contemporary secular context, and how they can help us navigate the ongoing ecological and psychosocial changes caused by industrialisation, globalisation and consumerism. Andy has created work in public and private spaces in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston and Hobart. He has collaborated with community in colleges, high schools, primary schools, community centres, and child and family centres.

www.andyvagg.com

Troy Melville

Troy has worked on an extensive range of film and art projects over 20 years. His projects have involved working for and in collaboration with many different organisations and has often involved working with at risk youth, First Nations and CALD groups. Recent art projects include Paul Boam – A Creative Life, a film for his retrospective exhibition at Moonah Arts Centre. The Partnershipping Project, a national touring exhibition where Troy worked remotely with 19 artists to edit short bio films and Regenerate where New Town primary students created a series of short films about connectivity.

Yumemi Hiraki

Yumemi Hiraki is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Nipaluna. Her practice delves into the interactions between memory, nostalgia, history and connection to place, while re-examining the relationship to her Japanese heritage. Viewing herself as a resident of cultural gaps, her works evokes a familiar yet foreign sense of longing, belonging and holding on, while hinting at life’s inevitable continuity and ephemerality. 

Yumemi is originally from Hiroshima, Japan. She completed her BFA(Sculpture and Spatial Practice) at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been an active Arts Worker while exhibiting and developing her practice in both Naarm and Nipaluna. Yumemi has a growing interest in community-based arts, mentorship and education, and currently also works as a Youth Arts Officer at the Youth Arts and Recreation Centre.

Julie Waddington

A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Julie has been directing and producing theatre for over 20 years during which she has worked for many organisation including St Martin’s Youth Arts, La Mama, MTC, Melbourne Fringe, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Ten Days and Tasmania Performs. From 2007 to 2010 she was the Artistic Director of Riverland Youth Theatre in South Australia. Julie is currently a specialist drama teacher and independent director and producer. Her latest work, The Motherload, a creative documentary performance made through engagement with over 500 mothers across Tasmania and Australia recently premiered at Junction Arts Festival.

Takani Clark

Takani Clark is a professional dabbler and multidisciplinary creative from lutruwita, exploring and engaging with mediums of filmmaking, visual art and performance. As a First Nations woman, raised within the staunch palawa community, Takani feels a deep responsibility to protect and document the island and its cultural identity and diversity, both environmentally and socially. As a storyteller she strives to use her creative voice to deepen our understanding of each other, the natural world and ourselves. Takani believes that diversity is an integral part of her creative practice, striving to collaborate with people from different artistic practices, any background and all walks of life.

Neko Kelly

Neko Kelly is a New Zealand born emerging video artist with experience in editing and animation. His work involves a range of content; from stop-frame stories screened in Mona Foma, to LGBTQI+ educational resources for Tasmanian schools. Neko has a keen interest in telling stories that inspire empathy and compassion for marginalised communities.

Sheree Martin (Utopia Now Coordinator)
Info to come

Dummies Corp

Dummies Corp are the Australian circus-comedy specialists, recognised for creations of quality that are intelligent, theatrical, inventive and resonate across generations. Their productions transcend language barriers and their unique brand of dum and delightful has created treasured experiences for audiences across the globe.

Emma Field

Emma is an accordionist and classically trained pianist with a love of French film music, chanson, musette, and tango styles. Having trained in the UK, she has accompanied divas, folk bands, and theatre productions in London – along with weddings in Italy and France. She now enjoys playing in all-female performance ensemble Miettes.

Sasha Gavlek

Sasha Gavlek is a contemporary bassist hailing from Hobart, with a love for alternative jazz and rhythmic experimentation, alongside a passion for exchanging culture and musical knowledge between fellow peers and audience members.

Edith Perrenot

Edith Perrenot  is an interdisciplinary artist of visual, performing and musical art as well as an emerging writer for performance. Here she navigates between french repertoire and theatrical experiments. Performing using voice as an instrument and building fictional characters to share feelings and vignettes-like narratives.

Julia Drouhin

Julia Drouhin is an artist and curator working with field recordings, water based instruments, electromagnetic frequencies, dice, rope, textile and edible objects to embody invisible soundstream that reveal friction in sociality and shift usual modes of transmission.

Svetlana Bunic

An adept accordionist, composer, musical director and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, bass, ukulele, programming, percussion), Svetlana’s music has framed live international circus theatre, underscored film and thrilled audiences worldwide in a kaleidoscope of exotic music ensembles.

Maude Davey
Maude Davey has worked as an actor, director and writer in Melbourne for more than thirty-five years, with her primary focus being the creation of new work. Recent acting work includes: K-BOX, by Ra Chapman for Malthouse Theatre; Set Piece by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall for Rising Festival; The Heartbreak Choir, by Aidan Fennessey for MTC; Anthem for Arts Centre Melbourne at the Melbourne, Sydney and Perth Festivals.

She has worked extensively in variety, as member of Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box/Burlesque Hour ensemble and directed the acclaimed Gender Euphoria, presented by Melbourne Festival 2019. Television appearances include The News Reader, Sisters, Offspring, Tangle, Summer Heights High, Five Bedrooms, The Newsreader, and films include My Year Without Sex, Noise and Ride Like A Girl. She has also been the Artistic Director of two small theatre companies (Vitalstatistix Theatre Company in Adelaide and Melbourne Workers Theatre). She won a Green Room Award for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role for her work in Melancholia by Declan Greene, (Malthouse Theatre, 2018). Her directing credits include Clare Barron’s Dance Nation for Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre; KillJoy with the laserbeanz and Fish for the Rollercoaster Ensemble. She received a Masters in Writing for Performance from VCA in 2016. She is currently a PhD candidate at La Trobe University, investigating queer short form variety performance.