Performing Arts WA Awards nominees announced

Performing Arts WA has revealed its nominations for the 2018 Performing Arts WA Awards and we are thrilled to see so many familiar names in the mix, including some artists we’ve been lucky to collaborate with at Performing Lines WA.

We are particularly excited to see that the awards have been expanded to include Dance, which is a great development for the WA sector. This year’s awards feature a record number of nominees across 23 categories encompassing performance, direction and design.

For panel member and PLWA Associate Producer Zainab Syed, it’s been great to see such a broad portfolio of works making it to the final list, including Frank Enstein, a co-production between Co3 Australia and The Farm that Performing Lines WA will tour nationally in 2021.

“It was such a privilege to be a part of the panel and watch stellar independent artists create such high-quality works over the course of 2018,” Zainab said. “It’s also wonderful to see the PAWA Awards broaden their scope to include Dance and more design categories to ensure creatives in all aspects of a show are recognised for their work.”

Frank Enstein by Co3 Australia and The Farm

Writer, Director and Performer Will O’Mahony has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Assassins and Best Actor for his role in Hir, both by Black Swan State Theatre Company.

After having produced two of Will’s latest shows, including Great White in 2015 and award-winning Coma Land in 2017 in collaboration with Black Swan, we are now working with him on his new play Minneapolis that explores the repercussions that public shaming has of someone’s life.

Responding to the MeToo movement, Minneapolis takes an unflinching look at our broken masculinity, systemic rape culture and the normalisation of hate speech. It also explores the grey space between the public and the private in an age where more and more people subscribe to the idea that a life not recorded is a life not lived. It’s a dark inversion of the boy meets girl formula and asks whether two people whose relationship is founded on destruction can ever find a connection.

Will O’Mahony directing Coma Land, 2017

Will O’Mahony and Daisy Sanders in Great White, 2015

We are also very excited to see emerging artist Mararo Wangai being nominated for Best Supporter Actor for his role in The Last Great Hunt’s Improvement Club.

Mararo recently approached Performing Lines WA to produce Black Brass, a new work thatgathers and relects stories of resilience from a range of diverse migrant communities and how, in a networked world that amplifies the shouts of victory, we forget that even small wins deserve celebration and recognition.

Mararo Wangai in The Last Great Hunt’s Improvement Club

Amy and Morgan both featured in Coma Land by Will O’Mahony

We are very pleased to see Amy Mathews nominated for Best Actor and Morgan Owen for Best Supporting Actor for their respective roles in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Black Swan State Theatre Company and Court My Crotch by The Blue Room Theatre & FUGUE. They both featured in Will O’Mahony’s Coma Land that we coproduced with Black Swan in 2017.

Congratulations as well to Humphrey Bower for his nomination for Best Actor In An Independent Production for his role in HIRO: The Man Who Sailed His House by The Blue Room Theatre and Samantha Chester. Humphrey has been involved in a number of our projects including Coma Land by Will O’Mahony, Overexposed by Danielle Micich and Wish.

Humphrey Bower in Overexposed by Danielle Micich

Special mention also goes to Tarryn Gill for her nomination as Best Costume Designer for Hir by Black Swan. Renowned for her whimsical life-sized masks, multidisciplinary artist Tarryn Gill has been collaborating with director Kathryn Osborne on Unheimlich, a new show produced by Performing Lines WA that explores our subconscious and reveals how the ego and the heart can fight with each other, bringing our darkest emotions to light.