Queer Flings

Robyn Archer AO FAHA is a singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts. Winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Cabaret Performer 2013, and named Cabaret Icon at the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, she currently performs highly acclaimed recitals of French, German and American song, After COVID’s multiple postponements, Robyn returned to the stage in 2021 for the 20th anniversary of Ten Days on The Island (the festival she created for Tasmania) with the feisty and moving Mother Archer’s Cabaret for Dark Times which also played the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Melbourne Recital Centre. During lockdowns Robyn contributed video performances to the Cabaret Festival and Midusmma as well as essays and podcasts for University of Melbourne and Australian Book Review. In July 2022 she premiered Robyn Archer: an Australian Songbook with a two week season for Queensland Theatre. The show was an audience and critical success and will tour in 2023: Belvoir Theatre in Sydney has announced a season October 2023 and other cities will soon be announced. Robyn has also been invited to perform at World Pride in Sydney February 2023. Robyn is recognised internationally for her expertise in the repertoire of the Weimar Republic and for many other stage successes such as A Star is Torn and Tonight Lola Blau. She has written plays including Il Magnifico, Poor Joanna (with poet Judith Rodriguez), and Architektin; plays with music including Songs From Sideshow Alley and Café Fledermaus and The Bridge, and devised cabarets featuring her own songs and writing such as The Pack of Women, Scandals and Cut and Thrust. Robyn has recorded eleven albums, most notably Robyn Archer Sings Brecht (recorded at Abbey Road with The London Sinfonietta). Her complete back catalogue (including her raucous originals) is being digitally re-released by Rouseabout Records (Undercover music) and is now available on various digital platforms. Robyn has published numerous books from The Robyn Archer Songbook to Mrs Bottle’s Burp and Detritus (a collection of her public speeches) as well as writing for the Griffith Review and the Australian Book Review. But she is equally known worldwide for her wider contributions to the arts. She was formerly Artistic Director of the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals, creator of Ten Days on the Island for Tasmania, and creative producer of The Centenary of Canberra 2013. Robyn continues to combine advisory and mentoring roles with her own creative output. Former Deputy Chair of The Australia Council, Robyn was cultural advisor to arts and culture on the Gold Coast and chaired the Board of HOTA. She also chaired the inaugural Master of Fine Arts in Cultural Leadership at NIDA and for ten years she mentored for the European Festivals’ Association Academy Ateliers. Among her many awards, including the ABR Laureate, the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leadership Award, the SA Premier’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Society for Performing Arts’ International Achievement Award and an ARIA Award for Best Soundtrack (The Pack of Women), the 2018 Adelaide Festival of Ideas Dedication recognised Robyn for her contribution to the world of ideas and public life, and received the JC Williamson Centenary Lifetime Achievement Award. Robyn is an Officer of the Order of Australia, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), Officer of the Crown (Belgium) ,Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide as well as Flinders , Canberra and Griffith Universities and the University of South Australia.

Introducing the daughter of the moon, Evana De Lune.

This Lizard Queen was created for the sheer purpose of your viewing pleasure. Inspiring queer panic across Melbourne and the world is one of Evana’s many pastimes. As a classically trained dancer, her fetishes for the finer things in life thrusted her towards the rhinestoned art of burlesque. Evana is here to remind you of your deepest desires and bring completeness to your cravings.

This glameleon will show you how naturally she can shed her clothes as if it were her own skin.

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a TODAY show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Luke King is a multidisciplinary artist, video producer and teacher. He has an interest in collaboration, especially with kids, and has performed or co-created works with choreographers, dancers, performers, and other visual artists, in public and private museums and galleries. Luke is a co-founder of Magic Hands with Geoff Riding, and they have been teaching Deaf-led beginner and intermediate Auslan classes since 2015.

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2012), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). He's also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter who created and co-wrote three seasons of the award-winning TV series The Family Law (SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia), wrote the sold-out mainstage play Torch the Place (Melbourne Theatre Company, 2020), and is co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer on the forthcoming Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania. Every week, Benjamin co-hosts ABC Radio National's weekly national pop culture show Stop Everything! and interviews public figures for Good Weekend magazine (the Age/Sydney Morning Herald). He is a literary scout for Hachette Australia, board member of Story Factory, committee member of the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship and ambassador for Plan Australia, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Victorian Pride Centre, Bridge for Asylum Seekers and the Pinnacle Foundation.

Sasja Sÿdek is an indigenous Singaporean – a proud trans womxn of colour. As an activist/advocate for the transgender community, she sends an empowering message to others: “free yourself from the shackles of societal and gender expectations to live life authentically”. Juggling her multiple roles as a co-founder of Trans Sisters United and Trans Pride March Melbourne, a board member of transfemme.com.au to end violence against trans womxn, as well as her work on the airwaves as one of 3CR’s radio host and producer at Queering The Air, it’s not hard to see Sasja’s dedication and passion for equality and human rights. While Sasja ‘s unwavering vocal advocacy for her community comes from a place of strength and empowerment, it’s taken a journey of learning and self-determination for her to reach this point.

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which was shortlisted in 2021 for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Ellen also won the Queensland Literary Awards – Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award and the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre Literary Awards – Peter Blazey Fellowship in 2019.