Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 11 June
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Patricia Cornelius, Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks have been making radical and confronting theatre together for decades. ‘I’ve never believed the bullshit about how audiences don’t like risk,' Cornelius has said. 'They actually really do. I’ve seen it.'
Long-term collaborators, their work has more often found a home in innovative independent companies than in establishment state theatres. Yet their provocative Australian stories, dealing especially with issues of class and power, have brought them huge admiration among audiences and critics.
Their admirers, it turns out, extend far beyond Australian shores. Earlier this year, Patricia Cornelius was named among the winners of the lucrative Windham-Campbell Prize, administered by Yale University. Two of her plays – SHIT and LOVE – will be staged at the Venice Biennale in July.
But first, those two productions will show in Melbourne at fortyfivedownstairs, directed by Dee and starring Wilks. Before they hit the road for Venice, we’ll present a conversation with the powerhouse trio at the Wheeler Centre. Join them as they speak with Alison Croggon about politics, performing arts and the power of making audiences squirm in their seats.
Featuring
Patricia Cornelius
Patricia Cornelius is a founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre. She’s a playwright, novelist and film writer. She’s the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize and the 2019 Green Room award for Life Achievement. She’s been awarded the Victorian, NSW and Queensland Premiers' Prizes, the Patrick White Fellowship and the Mona Brand Award for playwriting, as well as numerous AWGIE awards.
She has written over 35 plays, including Runt, Shit, Big Heart, Savages, Do not go gentle…, Slut, Love and The Call.
Patricia’s novel, My Sister Jill (Random House) was published in 2002.
She’s currently developing a feature film, Stolen, with director and co-writer, Catriona McKenzie.
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Nicci Wilks
Nicci is a freelance artist continually creating and performing works of various art forms.
She began her career with the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. She has trained in theatre and circus around the globe including: The Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe (China), the John Palacy Trapeze Volant School (France), Ecole Philippe Gaulier (France), La Fura Dels Baus (Spain), Witness Relocation (New York), Chiara Guidi (Italy) and specifically in circus in Montreal, Norway and Germany. Nicci has worked with a number of companies including: Circus Oz, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, KAGE, CIRCA, Melbourne Workers Theatre, Hothouse Theatre, Monoxide Circus, Company 2, Born In A Taxi, Dislocate, Legs On The Wall, NORPA and Retro Futurismus.
She was Assistant Director and performer for The 24 Hour Experience (Festival of Live Art) and for the award winning show Taxi by Susie Dee and Patricia Cornelius. Her one-woman intimate show The Teensy Top has been presented at The Victorian Arts Centre, The Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and The French Festival and also at the Hoopla Festival and The Tasmanian Circus Festival.
She has performed in 12 different languages at numerous international theatres and festivals. She also works as a Clown Doctor for The Humour Foundation. Nicci has created many new works as a performer and creator/devisor with various independent artists and companies throughout Australia and also as a solo artist. She recently directed the dark, comic circus show Party Ghost starring Olivia Porter and Jarred Dewey.
She is a performer and co-devisor of the highly acclaimed show The Long Pigs (nominated for 3 Green Room awards). She is a performer in the critically acclaimed production of SHIT by Patricia Cornelius (winner 4 Green Room awards) and played a dog for Malthouse Theatre’s production of Normal Suburban Planetary Meltdown by Angus Cerini.
Recently she was a co-creator and performer of ANIMAL (winner 4 Green Room awards) and the production of Caravan which had its world premier at the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts. Later this year she is developing a new work with Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee titled RUNT.
Susie Dee
Susie has worked extensively in the theatre as a performer, devisor and director in Australia and overseas for the past thirty years. She has been the Artistic Director of three theatre companies: Melbourne Workers Theatre (MWT), Union House Theatre (UHT) and Institute Of Complex Entertainment (ICE), whose projects went on to win various awards and received many accolades for their ground-breaking site-specific work. In 2011, Susie was the recipient of the Australia Council residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
She has directed works for MTC, Malthouse Theatre, Hothouse Theatre and many independent theatre companies and has been nominated for and won numerous awards. Her 2016 production, Animal (co-devised with Nicci Wilks and Kate Sherman), won five Green Room Awards, including Best Director.
In 2017 she was nominated for three Green Room Awards including for Best Director for Looking Glass by Louris Van de Geer and for Big Heart by Patricia Cornelius. She was also nominated for Best Director in the 2017 Helpmann Awards for Patricia Cornelius’ SHIT. The same year, Susie co-directed and performed in Caravan, a Melbourne Festival/Malthouse co-production, co-written by Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley and Melissa Reeves. Last year Susie spent time in Russia/Siberia, the first stage in the development of a new large-scale theatrical work.
Alison Croggon
Alison Croggon is an award-winning novelist, poet, theatre writer, critic and editor who lives in Melbourne, Australia. She works in many genres and her books and poems have been published to acclaim nationally and internationally.
She is arts editor for The Saturday Paper and co-founder of the performance criticism website Witness. Her most recent book is the creative non-fiction Monsters, out in March 2021, from Scribe Publications.