Saturday 14 January 2023 7:30pm – 12:00midnight The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
Soon to be Hobart run-aways It Thing join their friends All The Weathers and Liquid Nails for a night of splintering punk!
This back-to-back attack of local, and most importantly- loud live bands will take place on the land of the palawa people.
It Thing
It Thing is not a girl band from lutruwita / naarm. IT THING boasts a fist-hit setlist full of badinage (come and find out what that means!) I.T Thing has been likened to Hagen and English Punk Band from the 70s or 80s or something.
All The Weathers
All The Weathers have graced Hobart and beyond (if there is any such thing) for years, forming a deadly repertoire of songs each crazier than the last. Not shy of instrument hopping, swapping and hip hopping, ATW will surely rattle your brain with their diverse sound.
Liquid Nails
Local home grown punk. No compromises, don’t accept substitutes.
Flours for my baby… A night of wonder and excitement featuring Dumaresq, Les Nointers, Edward Guglielmino and special guests Random Acts of Weirdness.
When do you give your loved one flours? When you’ve been naughty, when you want to be naughty and when they need to bake. Flours for my baby is a night of music, mayhem, performance art, video mishmashes and celebration.
Dumaresq (pronounced “dju-merick”) is Queensland-born, nipuluna/Hobart-based vocalist & producer Joe Kneipp.
Joe, while unable to place himself in any specific genre, describes his music as a “alternative rock, with some ambient and shoegaze influences.”
As well as his solo project, Joe is a member of indie-rock project Maison Hall. He has toured in his native Australia and internationally as a session musician for Fletcher Gull, Harper Bloom and others. Joe and Dumaresq have been featured in NME and Rolling Stone Australia, and has received radio support from triple J, 4zzz, FBi Radio, and more.
Les Nointers are Lucien Simon and Cameron Healy from seminal 90s Tasmanian misfit stagger rock outfit DUST, flamenco metal queen Katherine Diaz Robayo and drum slinger Marcos Genaris.Described as a cross between the Pixies and the Beatles – Les Nointers are the impossible made real.
Joining Les Nointers on stage will be the angelic Koko Flow on a duet with the demonic Lucien.
Edward Guglielmino is an Australian musician, disc jockey, public speaker, academic, and blogger based in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He currently is a member of musical groups the Thin Kids and Lost of Love, but is best known for his own solo music career and has commercially released three full-length albums.
Random acts of Weirdness
Random acts of Weirdness is the woman of many faces Jem Nicholas and the woman of many sounds cellist Georgia Shine, together, and often with dance contortionist Risa Ray, they create moments of the sublime, the occasional crime and the odd rhyme.
Salamanca Art Centre’s 2022 programs are supported by the Commonwealth Government’s Office of the Arts via the RISE Fund.
Saturday 3 December 2022 Show 7pm-11pm The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
It’s that time of year again, where people go to families, we argue about gender to Aunt Mavis, and giggle at grinder as little Timmy opens his presents. Us queers have a strange relationship with xmas, and this cabaret is where we can come to find solace, cry melancholy, and scream at the capitalistic holiday that makes us think of Mary pushing Jesus out into the world.
We have a bunch of your old favourite talents, and a few new presents to stick in your stockings. Don’t forget to bring a plate.
QT Cabaret is a place for Transgender and Gender queer people to trial cabaret acts, or just let off some steam on stage. It is a space to meet other people, and to watch the amazingly talented community of Hobart.
Whilst the wearing of masks is not mandatory it is recommended in certain situations by Tasmanian Public Health. Masks will be available upon entering the venue for those patrons who would like one.
If you’re unwell, it is recommended that you stay at home, and we look forward to welcoming you at Salamanca Arts Centre another time.
Artists
Photo: Trash King Photography
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.
Inspired by a play that got its author charged with immorality, five authors have worked together to write the stories of ten couples—always played by the same two actors—that take place over a day and a night in the middle of a Hobart winter. Oh, and the characters have sex in every scene.
Carrie McLean – Writer Stephanie Jack – Writer Hera Fox – Writer Andy Vagg – Writer Matthew Cooke – Writer Chris Mead – Director and Dramaturg Fengyi Liu – Actor Jem Nicholas – Actor Natalya Bing – Composer Joshua Santospirito – Composer Jason James – Lighting Design Nicole Robson – Set Design Lucien Simon – Producer
Inspired by the play that was banned on its 1903 publication, started a riot on its 1920 Berlin premiere, was shut down by police in Vienna a year later when its author was charged with immorality, La Ronde also inspired David Hare’s The Blue Room, the musical Hello Again!, 18 movies (including by Max Ophüls and Roger Vadim) and Australia’s own three hundred and sixty positions in a one night stand. This is a story with staying power, genuine insight, and a real point of difference—the characters have sex in every scene. Freud was a fan, really.*
In this new play, commissioned by Salamanca Arts Centre, five writers gather to give audiences an erotic, wild and wicked tour of an Australian waterside city. Spur-of-the-moment hook-ups, long-standing clandestine assignations and unanticipated encounters provide the prism with which to see real people, groping towards intimacy, awkward, curious, uncertain, sometimes finding relief, intermittently uncovering meaning, occasionally even discovering joy.
This is no suburban bump-and-grind mini-bus ride for voyeurs, but a rich, provocative and elegant dissection of desire and politics, their points of intersection, disturbing collisions and bewildering deviations. With a year of development, led by director and dramaturg Chris Mead, there’s been time to get more than just a mouthful of those ‘c words’ up on the rehearsal room floor, but time to consult, champion, co-operate, construct and create.
Keen to move beyond the tacky, crass or salacious, this play takes the opportunity to plumb the depths of a city, its glorious geography, demographic contours, rental crises, immorality, failing parliament, ostentatious mid-winter festivals, stiff conservatism, dirty secrets, history, forgotten corners, psychosexual dynamics as well as some of its people, their yearnings, peccadilloes, transgressions, crimes of the heart, indulgences, confessions, gifts, cravings.
Two actors play all ten characters. You will have seen nothing like it. Not only is it a workout for the mind, for the senses, maybe even post-show for dating apps, but for the two crazy-brave actors Fengyi Liu and Jem Nicholas, it’s the kind of job to keep you up at night, researching characters, locales and probable backstories. Quick changes and detailed vocal and physical behaviours are the order of the day as the characters range from 16 to 55 years old, and hail variously from Brighton, Smithton, Sandy Bay, New Town, the corner of Brisbane and Campbell, even Shenzen.
And the writers: Matthew Cooke is a data analyst; Hera Fox is already a legendary young playwright and cabaret hostess; Stephanie Jack is an Australian and Singaporean-Chinese actor, writer, and singer who has lived in six different countries and aboard a yacht; Carrie McLean is a playwright, founding member of Mudlark Theatre, an actor and mother of four; and Andy Vagg is an artist, writer, poet and performer whose work utilises post-consumer materials and objects to encourage positive social change.
Two musicians, Joshua Santospirito and Natalya Bing have composed the music for the piece. Bing/Santospirito create hypnotic improvised soundscapes using elements from classical improvisation combined with noise-improv-jazz. They often collaborate with visual artists and film-makers to create fully immersive performances. Bing/Santospirito has performed at major festivals and underground venues.
A Mouthful of ‘C’ Words is theatre at its most inventive, of-the-moment, in-yer-face, moving, ribald, shrewd, it shows and it tells.
Creative Team
Chris Mead| Director
Associate Professor Chris is Head of Drama at the Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne. He has recently published Wondrous Strange: Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays (Currency Press, 2022). Previous institutional position include: Literary Director, Melbourne Theatre Company; inaugural artistic director, PlayWriting Australia; Literary Manager, Sydney Theatre Company; Literary Manager, Belvoir; Curator, Australian National Playwrights’ Conference; and Festival Director, Interplay, the International Festival for Young Playwrights. Recent directing credits include Ross Mueller’s A Strategic Plan (Griffin Theatre, 2017), Richard Frankland’s Walking into the Bigness (co-directed by Wayne Blair, Malthouse 2014), Ian Wilding’s Rare Earth (NIDA 2011) and Quack (Griffin 2010), and Damien Millar’s The Modern International Dead (Griffin 2008) which won Best New Play (Sydney Theatre Critics’ Awards) and the WA Premier’s Literary Award. He has a PhD from Sydney University. His Currency House Platform Paper on institutional racism and outreach strategies, ‘What is an Australian Play?’ was published in 2008. In the past five years he has worked closely with writers Anchuli Felicia King, Aidan Fennessy, Merlynn Tong, Emme Hoy, Andrea James, Elise Esther Hearst, Phillip Kavanagh, Louris van de Geer, Lally Katz, Brendan Cowell, Joanna Murray-Smith, David Williamson, Eddie Perfect, Hannie Rayson, Tom Holloway, Angela Betzien, Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner, and Steve Vizard.
Photo: Amy Brown
Carrie MacLean| Writer
Carrie McLean is a freelance writer, director, actor and mother of four based in Hobart. She holds a BPA from UTAS, and is a founding member of Mudlark Theatre and Radio Gothic. For Mudlark, Carrie has written the plays Beautiful: A Ghost Story, Strange Fruit, The Angels of Two Hoots, Mind the Gap, The Fools of Fire, Danger #31and Cafe. In 2012, she wrote Chasing a Sound Like Rain, a youth theatre project for SSYT performed for Ten Days, and the Gros Morne Theatre Festival.
For Radio Gothic, Carrie wrote The Hanniford Tapes for Dark MOFO (2018), and performed in The Pit by Briony Kidd and The Illustrated Girl by Alison Mann. In 2020, Carrie directed the one woman show Who Cares? by Helen Swain for a Tasmania Performs tour and was part of the Imprognosis collective, performing long form improvisation, for the Burning Desire Festival.
In 2021, The Motherload, a documentary theatre performance co-created over four years, premiered at Junction Arts Festival with TTC. Carrie will be performing in Hobart’s Festival of Improvised Theatre with the Practitioners of Ephemeral Arts in 2022, and she is currently writing a solo theatre show called 100 F#@&ing Days.
Photo: Kishka Jensen
Stephanie Jack| Writer
Stephanie Jack is an Asian Australian actor and writer based in nipaluna/Hobart. She completed an M.F.A. Acting at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater Institute, including a semester at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Her performance highlights include acting alongside Essie Davis and Marta Dusseldorp in Archipelago Productions’ The Maids; playing the Queen in the N.Y. Times’ Critics’ Pick musical The Light Princess; and a recurring role in Amazon Prime’s upcoming television series, Deadloch. In 2021, Stephanie was the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s Associate Artist, and a core member of MONA’s Faro Ensemble. As a writer, she has contributed to Forty South, Peril Magazine, Mixed Asian Media, and Doyenne. Stephanie is currently developing a play called Mixed Feelings, a deep dive into mixed race heritage and modern Chinese culture, with the support of Asialink, a Regional Arts Fund Fellowship and Arts Tasmania. In 2022 she received the Margaret Scott Young Writer’s Fellowship at the Tasmanian Literary Awards, and was recognised by Asialink/University of Melbourne as one of 40 under 40 Most Influential Asian Australians.
Photo: Ben Dilger
Matthew Cooke| Writer
Matthew Cooke is a screenwriter and playwright from Hobart, Tasmania. He specializes in zeitgeist humour and is passionate about telling authentic LGBTQIA+ stories.
He was also a poet for forty-five harrowing minutes in high school, after his year nine English teacher came up with a cruel and unusual punishment during detention. The poem he wrote that lunchtime, titled A Day in the Life of Matt Cooke, later won an award in a national competition.
His most recent credits include completing Wide Angle Tasmania’s End Game program in 2019, and co-writing Uni Revue: Pundemic in 2020.
Photo: Ethan Woodward
Hera Fox| Writer
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.
Photo: Gabrielle Kneebone
Andy Vagg| Writer
Andy Vagg is an artist, writer, and performer. His art practice explores the qualities and limitations of contemporary existence, and how the choices we make inherently effect, respond to, and delineate social evolution. 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 work utilises post consumer materials, to create installations, sculptures and objects. His performances explore the role of religion, liturgy and ritual in a contemporary secular context, and how they can help us come to terms with the rapid changes brought about by industrialisation, globalisation and climate change. 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.
Photo: Cassie Sullivan
Jem Nicholas| Actor
Jem Nicholas has worked as an actor in Australia, New Zealand and New York. Jem holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts from Monash University, and has since further her studies at the Susan Batson Studio NY, 16TH Street Actors Studio and The Melbourne Actors Lab. Jem has also trained with Hollywood Director and coach Kim Farrant. Some of her notable theatre credits include playing Carrie in ‘Rules for Living’ (Red Stitch Theatre), Sylvia in ‘You Are the Blood’ (Spinning Plates Co.), various lead roles in ‘Song Contest, Almost Eurovision Experience’ (Glynn Nicholas Group), Vendla in ‘Spring Awakening’ (Monash University), and many more. Jem has also appeared in ABC’s ‘Dr Blake Murder Mysteries,’ directed by Diana Reid, and as Elizabeth in ‘The spirit of the Game’ (Shearwater Entertainment). Jem is an independent play write and physical theatre performer and puppeteer and has received a Green Room Nomination for Best Actress in an Ensemble for her role as Rose in ‘Love, Love, Love’ with Red Stitch. She is currently training in the Alexander Technique in Hobart and will graduate as a teacher in 2014.
Photo: Cassie Sullivan
Fengyi Liu| Actor
Fengyi Liu studied Master of arts and cultural management in University of Melbourne, then went to Columbia University in the U.S, studying contemporary theatre as an exchange student. In 2020, he came to the University of Tasmania, studied theatre and performing arts, during which time he also performed in a number of critically acclaimed community theatres productions. As a theatre practitioner, he has directed and performed in 21 productions in Australia. He is also the artistic director of Do Theatre. Do theatre is a team of 13 people from linguistic diverse background and they are all passionate about developing multicultural theatre arts and with related experience accordingly as well. ENE World, as an event management company, support the production in administrative, marketing and management role. Do Theatre and ENE World have been worked with each other from March 2021 and presented more than 2 shows in Hobart, and staged the Last Laugh at Anywhere Festival Brisbane this year (winning best theatre show).
Natalya Bing& Joshua Santospirito | Composers
Natalya Bing is a classically-trained concert violinist with decades of experience performing at Opera houses with symphony orchestras and underground dive bars. She currently performs with Hartz Trio, Van Diemens Band, Warner Smith & Bancroft and occasionally with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Joshua Santospirito is a multimedia artist, writer, experimental musician/performer and an award winning graphic novelist. As a musician he has performed solo for 20 years across Australia and Europe but can usually be found these days in his studio making marks with ink on paper or in the garden with his chickens.
Jason James| Lighting Designer
Jason has worked as a designer for over fourteen years; creating designs principally for new works. His recent credits include design for Backwards from Winter, Echos, The Barbarians, and Kimisis IHOS Opera; Riddle of Washpool Gully, Red Racing Hood, Big Baby, Pip and Pooch, Shadow Dreams, Sleeping Horses Lie, and LoveTerrapin Puppet Theatre; BabelInvisible Practice, Merchant of Venice Loud Mouth, What Rhymes with Cars and Girls,Born from Animals, Branch Book Bench, The Company I KeepTasmanian Theatre Company; Flux, Wild at Heart, Motel DreamingUnconscious Collective; Abandoned Dances, Episodes, Birds, Sing for MeMature Artists Dance Experience. Fall, Winter, SpringSecond Echo Ensemble.
Jason has developed a broader arts practice around light, sound and projection over the last seven years. He is recently graduated with a Fine Arts Degree from the Tasmanian School of Art, and has had several artworks presented in festivals, and galleries, around Tasmania. Recent works include Wind and WaveformsKingston Beach Arts Hub 2018, Eat ArtMoonah Arts Centre 2018, The Search The Unconformity 2016, and Angry ElectronsDark Mofo 2015.
In April 2022 he curated the video art survey exhibition Photons at Moonah Arts Centre.
Nicole Robson | Set Designer
Nicole has a Masters in Fine Art, she works primarily in photography and design. Nicole traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland to participate in reGeneration2: tomorrow’s photographers today, launched at the Musée de l’Elysée. and touring to countries such as China, South Africa, USA, and France. Nicole received a Marie Edwards Travel scholarship to attend the opening and folio review at the Aperture foundation in New York. This exhibition also included a publication of the same name, printed by Thames and Hudson.
Nicole has had exhibitions in CAT Gallery (Contemporary Arts Tasmania), Queen Victoria Museum, The Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney and a solo exhibition at The Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne. Nicole is represented by Penny Contemporary Gallery.
Nicole Master’s exegesis explored the theatricality in the domestic space, examining the suburban ‘home’ as a performative space. Over the last 10 years Nicole has taken her design and visual art experience into theatre environment. Working closely with various organisations such as MADE (Mature Artist Dance Experience), in productions such as Pane, Sing For Me and Episodes, as well as Invisible Practice, creating sets for Brittle, and F*ck and Salamanca Arts Centre, with the design and construction for the SAC Art Ball.
Most recently Nicole worked on the set design for the Opera, The Call of the Aurora by Joe Bugden and with Sacred Heart School, designing and constructing the set for their major combined high school and primary school production, Sinbad.
Join us for play-readings by the writers of the 2022 FRESH INK National Mentoring Program.
Mentored over nine months by Belinda Bradley and directed by Natalie Venettacci, join us to celebrate the work of Amelia Pond, Noah Casey, Mostafa Faraji and Milla Chaffer.
Show 1 Thursday 1 December 2022 Door Open 7:30pm | Performance from 8:00pm – 11:00pm (includes intervals)
Show 2 Friday 2 December 2022 Door Open 7:30pm | Performance from 8:00pm – 11:00pm (includes intervals)
The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
Tickets General Admission (seated)
Single Show Ticket $38.50 (+BF) 2 x Shows Ticket $57.75 (+BF)
Single Show Tickets available at the door (pending availability) $50 (Cash Only)
Bassist and jazz band leader Leigh Barkeris bringing his band to Australia for the first time in over six years. The Leigh Barker Band brings audiences the classic sounds of the golden era of American jazz, presented in their uniquely Australian style. A style that also carries the inflections of 21st century Paris, center of the renaissance of French swing and hot jazz, and current home to the band leader.
Canberra born, Melbourne trained, and Paris-based, Barker has always had his band out on the road, playing their unique mix of classic swing, blues, hot jazz, and original compositions. On this tour, The Leigh Barker Band boasts a cast of Melbourne musicians and long-time bandmates, and most importantly stars Heather Stewart, award-winning vocalist and violinist and another Paris favourite. Catch this band live on stage for the first time in six years, as they bring their popular European show to the Antipodes.
This tour showcases the release of their new album PARIS/MELBOURNE, released online at the height of the pandemic, and only now coming to audiences in person and on CD. Paris/Melbourne stars members of this touring band, and also features six bonus tracks from the new Paris lineup. It is a trans-continental, international, and cross-cultural expression of jazz at its hottest, swingingest best.
Thursday 22 December 2022 8pm – late Doors 7.30pm The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
It’s time to get festive! We’ve put together a huge comedy show so you can get absolutely full of Christmas cheer! Featuring a stacked lineup of Tassie’s finest plus an interstate headliner live in The Founders.
Starring: Kel Balnaves – Winner Best Comedy Weekly Award Adelaide Fringe 2021 Gav Baskerville – “Well polished. Had the room belly laughing.” – Herald Sun Chloe Black – “Kept The Audience in Stitches”- Sydney Morning Herald Rob Braslin – Deadly Funny Runner Up 2016
Tickets $20 pre sale $100 group of 6 tickets pre sale
Salamanca Art Centre’s 2022 programs are supported by the Commonwealth Government’s Office of the Arts via the RISE Fund.
Thursday, 8 December 2022 7.00pm – 9.00pm Doors 6.45pm The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
A Theatresports Christmas.
PROTEA Impro is home for Christmas!
It’s the last Theatresports for 2022 and it’s a festive one!
It’s all your favourite games with a Christmassy twist. Two teams battling it out for the right to hold aloft the As Yet Unnamed Perpetual Trophy. Featuring the finest Christmas improvisers Santa has to offer.
Salamanca Art Centre’s 2022 programs are supported by the Commonwealth Government’s Office of the Arts via the RISE Fund.
Thursday, 24 November 2022 7.00pm – 9.00pm Doors 6.45pm The Founders Room Salamanca Arts Centre Enter via Wooby’s Lane, or for lift access enter through The Courtyard
PROTEA Impro return with another round of Tasmania’s favourite: Theatresports.
Come along and see two teams battle it out playing improvised scenes and games. Who will hold aloft the As Yet Unnamed Perpetual Trophy? It’s one of a kind made up hilarity and mayhem featuring the finest improvisers Hobart has to offer.
Ben Salter Accomplished songwriter and performer Ben Salter has spent the past few years of these strange times at the Museum Of Old & New Art (MONA) in lutruwita/Tasmania composing and performing daily in his own studio/installation, Import/Export.
An already prolific artist, Salter has written, recorded and released four albums of new material over the past 12 months, demonstrating an increasingly eclectic and progressive bent in both his lyrics and compositions. Now he is to undertake his first national tour in over three years, presenting songs old and new in the intimate solo mode he has grown so adept at during his daily performances at the museum.
Photo: Nick McKK
Laura Imbruglia Australian songwriter Laura Imbruglia has been releasing records since the early noughties. A restless musician with broad music taste, she’s released four albums, played almost every corner of Australia and several pockets of Europe.
Photo: supplied by the artist
Saree Salter Tasmanian singer-songwriter Saree Salter has been performing since she was in middle school. Saree grew up on the East Coast, where she passionately refined her sound and broadened her audience to the greater regions of Northern Tasmania. Saree has featured in iconic Tasmanian festivals such as Festival of the Voices and Junction Arts Festival.
Salamanca Art Centre’s 2022 programs are supported by the Commonwealth Government’s Office of the Arts via the RISE Fund.
