What do you do?
I'm a pharmacy assistant. I'm 27 and I live with my parents and my niece. I write, make plays, produce festivals and the women eating pasta at the table opposite me are looking at me with narrowed eyes.
When did you get into it?
January 2001 and now I can't get out of it. When we graduated from College, myself, Jack Lloyd, Mick Bailey, Muttley Shaw and Nicky Johnson formed a theatre company called Bohemian Productions and started producing plays - a mixture of Absurdist works by writers like Harold Pinter and our own scripts. Turns out if you pursue your dreams too hard you end up incapable of pursuing anything else. Like Mickey B said, never have a plan B.
Who or what influences you as an artist? Ever make anyone's life measurably better or worse?
Yes. That happened.
What’s your biggest achievement/proudest moment so far
Too hard. The biggest project was co-directing (with Gillian Schwab) the Crack Theatre Festival, a national festival and forum for theatre and performing artists as part of This Is Not Art in Newcastle. Gills and I founded the festival, directed it for its first two years (2009-10) and recently handed it over to a new batch of co-directors to take into the future. Applications for the 2011 festival should be open soon - check out cracktheatrefestival.com if you’re interested.
What are your plans for the future? Is it true that your mentors include Christian hip hop legend Kevin Max of pioneering holy hip hop trio dcTalk?
It is completely true. He is my rogue Unitarian Mentor.
What makes you laugh? How important is it that I visit YouTube and search for dcTalk's 1992 hit Jesus Is Just Alright? Nothing could be more critical at this point in history.
What pisses you off?
It's okay.
What’s your opinion of the local scene?
I am a creation of the local scene. In every meaningful sense, I have grown out of Canberra's independent/fringe theatre community. My skills, my aesthetics, my understanding of the art form; these are all completely the result of collaborating with fellow Canberran theatre-makers over the last ten years. So objectively it might be good or bad, but personally, the local scene is the reason I'm still making theatre.
What are your upcoming projects?
I'm touring a new solo show This Is Patient Zero: A Christian Guide To Intimate Sexuality, directed by barb Barnett, to the Adelaide Fringe Festival as part of a double-bill with Hadley entitled HOW TO SEX. Following that, I'm curating and producing a new arts festival in Canberra in March. (Watch this space! – Ed)
Contact info:
I am curled up online at www.blind-dragonfly.com
