Founded in 1982 as the Australian Content Division of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT), Performing Lines incorporated as an independent non-profit organisation in 1990.
We’ve worked with many of Australia’s leading contemporary performing artists and companies. Highlights include Nigel Jamieson and Paul Grabowsky’s extraordinary Indonesian collaboration The Theft of Sita; Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman’s The 7 Stages of Grieving; William Yang’s Sadness; Tanja Liedtke’s construct and Twelfth Floor; the Chooky Dancers and Nigel Jamieson’s Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin); and Wesley Enoch’s I am Eora.
We’ve had a significant influence on the Australian theatre scene, and particularly in the touring and presentation of Aboriginal theatre. Performing Lines toured Robert Merritt’s The Cake Man to Denver, Colorado in 1982 – the first time an Australian Aboriginal production toured internationally. Other significant works include ILBIJERRI’S Jack Charles V the Crown’; Jack Davis’ The Dreamers, No Sugar and Honeyspot; Sally Morgan’s Sister Girl and the Indigenous musical Bran Nue Dae.
Performing Lines has produced some of the most exciting and significant contemporary theatre and dance practitioners, including Lucy Guerin, Force Majeure, version 1.0, Chamber Made Opera, Back to Back Theatre, post and Aphids.
More recently, we have produced a range of works from artists including Nicola Gunn, Lz Dunn, Ghenoa Gela, Roslyn Oades, Ahilan Ratnamohan, The Farm, Gravity & Other Myths and Chunky Move.