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Performing Lines International Program 2024-26

Performing Lines is bringing a sparkling program to the world arts markets this year, and will be in attendance at PAMS (8-11 Oct) and in 2024 and HKPAX (14-18 Oct). We can’t wait to talk about all the amazing artists and work we have on offer.

We’re keen to chat with artists and presenters across the country about how we maximise support for independent artists and address challenges faced by the sector. Please feel free to reach and chat about our work, or more generally about the thrills and spills of producing and touring at the moment.

Browse the plethora of work below, including:

Premiering in 2025
Touring in 2025/26
Ready To Tour
In Development
Community Engagement

Meet The Team

Premiering in 2025

From Here, Together

Emma Fishwick

Producer: Jen Leys
jen@performinglineswa.org.au

What was discarded becomes new again in an upcycling of choreographic intent and a redirection of the original. 

Equally hypnotic and hauntingly beautiful, From Here, Together looks at space and how it informs our views of gender, power, and labour among other concepts.

LEGENDS (of the Golden Arches)

Joe Paradise Lui & Merlynn Tong

Producer: Jeremy Smith and Joo Tan
jeremy@performinglineswa.org.au
joo@performinglineswa.org.au

A powerful and deeply personal examination of the Asian cultural experience and the enduring power of friendship. It showcases the hard-to-articulate blue-collar religiosity that doesn’t exist in Australia and challenges the notion of Chinese culture as sacred.

Two old besties, Merlynn and Joe, find themselves in the midst of a traditional Chinese funeral for their grandfathers in Australia. As they spend the night in vigil, performing the traditional rites of mourning families, they clash over the preservation of culture and tradition.

The Censor

Vidya Rajan & Cassandra Fumi

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

Have you ever been told you can’t read this or that book? Maybe the adults said it was too scary? Or not a good book for kids?

What if you still really wanted to read it? What would you do?

Welcome to The Censor: a world where you can read everything.

Where you’re in control of what you choose to read.

Where you’re in control of yourselves.

Where you’re in control of… the adults!

SA/MOA

Lila Meleisea

Producer: Sinsa Mansell
sinsa@performinglinestas.org.au

A truly hybrid project, SA/MOA tells of Oceanic resilience and relationship as Tasmanian Samoan, Lila Meleisea, expands her music and community-based practice to roles as visual artist, artistic director and curator.

SA/MOA takes two simultaneous forms; a performance/exhibition space and a space for knowledge-sharing and community.

Touring in 2025/26

Rinse

Amrita Hepi

Producer: Thom Smyth
thom@performinglines.org.au

What is it about the beginning that remains intoxicating? Our persistent lust for the first rush of a romance, scene, canon, theory, relationship, meal or country. Created by extraordinary dance artist Amrita Hepi, Rinse explores the romance of beginnings and what happens next, when those initial thrills begin to fade and inertia takes over.

M’ap Boulé

Nancy Denis

Producers: Jane Schon
jane@performinglines.org.au

Experience the lyrical storytelling of M’ap Boulé – a dramatic Cabaret about a child born of immigrants growing up in a country called Australia. Nancy Denis shares funny and pivotal stories from her journey to embrace her Black, Queer, Haitian and Australian identities, framed by the pain and joy she carries from her self-liberated Ancestors who revolted against their colonisers and created the first black-led republic of Haiti.

Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh*t

Betty Grumble

Producer: Thom Smyth
thom@performinglines.org.au

After a decade of playing within her spiritual access point and avatar, Betty Grumble – performance artist Emma Maye Gibson re-emerges. A self reflective, regenerative dive into the compost bin of making and moving through the trouble; of defying the ever-present cultures of violence and ecocide. Bowing to the powers of Grief and Love Energy, Rage Energy, Hope Energy & Fuck Energy, Gibson invites you to sit with and honour the legacy of makers, mentors, friends, lovers and ‘enemies’ that have formed an ecosystem of aliveness within the perils of eco-grief and structures that certainly no longer serve us.

The Visitor

Moogahlin Performing Arts

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

AUNTY is BEAT Entertainment’s Inter-Indiginational-Kiki which is part cabaret, part party. AUNTY is a celebration of Music, Black Women, Queer Icons, Indigenous Royalty and everything FABULOUS in between. Creating and fostering important space for LGBTQIA+ communities centreing QTBIPOC artists and audience FIRST.

Ready To Tour

TWO

Raghav Handa

Producer: Vanessa Wright
vanessa@performinglines.org.au

In a joyful celebration of trust and collaboration, the pair push the boundaries of Indian Kathak convention in a charming and playful testament to friendship, respect and profound exchange. Imagining new ways of working shaped by the sharing and negotiation of power, TWO presents impressive physicality, virtuosic music and witty encounters to expertly demonstrate the creative potential in respectfully challenging tradition.

Equations of a Falling Body

Laura Boynes

Producer: Jen Leys
jen@performinglineswa.org.au

Our contemporary world is wildly unpredictable. The ‘elsewhere’ of distant forces – climate, cosmos, politics, memory – continually intervene in our everyday lives. It’s mostly beyond our control – encountered as idle distractions, radical interruptions or insistent voices inside that re-shape and cypher our thoughts and desires.

Us And All Of This

Liesel Zink

Producer: Jane Schon
jane@performinglines.org.au

In a world increasingly defined by rising geopolitical tension, ecological mismanagement, deteriorating labour conditions and social isolation, Liesel Zink’s Us And All Of This offers a rare moment of calm reflection. Bringing together 100 local dancers for a large-scale contemporary performance work, unfolding across large plots of urban public space, not in the pursuit of profiteering , but in the pursuit of togetherness and communion.

Deejay x Dancer

Nick Power

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

Deejay x Dancer brings Hip Hop’s traditional dance and musical instrument back into sharp focus, honouring the initial connection that sparked the worldwide culture, utilising this foundation to create new histories. Featuring 3 of Australia’s most accomplished Breakers fuelled by DJ Total Eclipse on the wheels of steel, this new work continues Nick Power’s choreographic exploration of Hip Hop’s rituals and origins, following on from his past 3 full length dance works; Cypher, Between Tiny Cities and Two Crews.

Stunt Double

The Farm

Producer: Vanessa Wright
vanessa@performinglines.org.au

Cycling through take after take of high octane stunts; flips, jumps, fights and more; the doubles put their body on the line while the actors reap the glory. In Stunt Double it’s the hardest working people who get paid the least and exploited the most. Sound familiar? Well that’s because some things never change. The show is a hilarious tongue in cheek dive into the complex and absurd power dynamics of the film industry, into exploitation as a bloodsport; and the human costs of celebrity and our quest to come out on top.

WAKE

THE RABBLE

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

Exploring the ever-increasing hostility towards women’s bodies particularly for older people, WAKE features acts of artistic courage created by the participating women, featuring anything from a ukulele solo to a professional wrestling bout; a Shakespeare monologue to a political speech. In an age of dislocation, WAKE is a work of solidarity.

UNWOMAN

THE RABBLE

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

Unwoman is song.
Unwoman is a crime.
Unwoman is a real and substantial risk.

UNWOMAN is an epic and imagistic piece of feminist theatre created in both Ireland and Australia, examining reproductive rights, experiences of pregnancy and bodily autonomy.

24 Hour Boogie

Betty Grumble

Producer: Thom Smyth
thom@performinglines.org.au

After a decade of playing within her spiritual access point and avatar, Betty Grumble – performance artist Emma Maye Gibson re-emerges. A self reflective, regenerative dive into the compost bin of making and moving through the trouble; of defying the ever-present cultures of violence and ecocide. Bowing to the powers of Grief and Love Energy, Rage Energy, Hope Energy & Fuck Energy, Gibson invites you to sit with and honour the legacy of makers, mentors, friends, lovers and ‘enemies’ that have formed an ecosystem of aliveness within the perils of eco-grief and structures that certainly no longer serve us.

Black Brass

Mararo Wangai

Producer: Jen Leys and Jeremy Smith
jen@performinglineswa.org.au
jeremy@performinglineswa.org.au

A stirring deliberation on the choices we make and how they shape our lives, Black Brass is a theatrical feast; playful yet mysterious. Written and performed by Mararo Wangai, joined live onstage by musician Mahamudo Selimane, this intimate and soulful experience celebrates stories of resilience – private victories rather than public actions.

Black Brass draws inspiration from interviews conducted with Perth’s Zimbabwean, Sudanese, South African, Central Congo, Mauritius, Nigerian, Congolese and Kenyan communities on the theme of resilience. Through its story it gives voice to the marginalised, offering a window into the lives and voices not often heard in the theatre.

In Development

The Act

Amrita Hepi

Producer: Thom Smyth
thom@performinglines.org.au

What is it about the beginning that remains intoxicating? Our persistent lust for the first rush of a romance, scene, canon, theory, relationship, meal or country. Created by extraordinary dance artist Amrita Hepi, Rinse explores the romance of beginnings and what happens next, when those initial thrills begin to fade and inertia takes over.

Love Less Tender

Raghav Handa

Producer: Vanessa Wright
vanessa@performinglines.org.au

Love Less Tender looks at the complexity of love and pleasure through the Sanskrit scripture, Kama Sutra.

The piece, a danced, spoken and sung conversation between the quartet, explores the motivations behind and the borders that lie between love & pleasure and how they are shaped by personal, cultural & contemporary forces. What would you do for love? Is it ever too much? Is pleasure always guilty?

Slow Burn, Together

Emma Fishwick

Producer: Jen Leys
jen@performinglineswa.org.au

Through a series of living pictures that collectively form a visual epic, Slow Burn, Together contemplates a female perspective of a world where we can be gentle, journey inward and pay attention to the experience of sitting longer with our thoughts, our ideas and time itself. There isn’t a singularity to each moment on stage, rather a slow experience, a collection of encounters that create an ongoing conversation between you and the work.

SPHINX

THE RABBLE

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@perfominglines.org.au

A cinematic performance installation investigating the role of the care giver as a gendered experience.

In 1977 Laura Mulvey made Riddles of the Sphinx, a film investigating her own work on the male gaze. Using Mulvey’s and other feminist filmmakers’ techniques THE RABBLE will create an event that looks at the role of the care giver. The camera not used as a tool to enhance the auteur’s gaze, but instead focusing on the small tasks of the care giver. It aims to decimate the traditional uses of the camera in live performance and search for a new kind of dramaturgy.

Community Engagement

Us And All Of This

Liesel Zink

Producer: Jane Schon
jane@performinglines.org.au

In a world increasingly defined by rising geopolitical tension, ecological mismanagement, deteriorating labour conditions and social isolation, Liesel Zink’s Us And All Of This offers a rare moment of calm reflection. Bringing together 100 local dancers for a large-scale contemporary performance work, unfolding across large plots of urban public space, not in the pursuit of profiteering , but in the pursuit of togetherness and communion.

WAKE

THE RABBLE

Producer: Kath Papas
kath@performinglines.org.au

Exploring the ever-increasing hostility towards women’s bodies particularly for older people, WAKE features acts of artistic courage created by the participating women, featuring anything from a ukulele solo to a professional wrestling bout; a Shakespeare monologue to a political speech. In an age of dislocation, WAKE is a work of solidarity.

SA/MOA

Lila Meleisea

Producer: Sinsa Mansell
sinsa@performinglinestas.org.au

A truly hybrid project, SA/MOA tells of Oceanic resilience and relationship as Tasmanian Samoan, Lila Meleisea, expands her music and community-based practice to roles as visual artist, artistic director and curator.

SA/MOA takes two simultaneous forms; a performance/exhibition space and a space for knowledge-sharing and community.

Meet The Team

Meet the Performing Lines team that will be attending Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo (HK PAX) and Performing Arts Market Singapore (PAMS) 2024. Feel free to get in touch with any of our staff leading up to the event, or flag us down for a chat in person.

Simon Wellington
Executive Producer

Simon@performinglines.orr.au

Vanessa Wright
Senior Producer NSW

vanessa@performinglines.org.au

Kath Papas
Senior Producer VIC

kath@performinglines.org.au

Haneen Mahmood Martin
Producer

haneen@performinglines.org.au

Cecile Lucas
Producer WA

cecile@performinglineswa.org.au

Jane Schon
Producer NSW

jane@performinglines.org.au

View New South Wales

View Western Australia

In everything we do, we acknowledge that we live on Aboriginal land and constantly learn from the wisdom of First Peoples.

Where we are and the history that precedes us informs how we work and how we move forward. 