Past Projects
Uncharted, Judith Wright Centre & Logan Entertainment
Centre, Dec 2007
Uncharted was an arts and cultural project that drew together a range of partners and diverse communities to created a dynamic and highly visual, physical and musical new work that was presented at the Judith Wright Centre (a major inner city theatre venue) followed by a free community performance event at the Logan Entertainment Centre. This new theatre work incorporated circus, capoeira, dance, multimedia animation and live music developed with participants from Logan and Brisbane’s refugee and migrant communities and emerging performers from Vulcana Women’s Circus’ Circus Paths emerging artists program. This stage of the project followed 10 weeks of workshops in skills development with members of the Central African refugee community in Logan. With the support of an experienced artistic team, theatre workers and cultural consultants, the Uncharted production was the culmination of these newly developed skills and a collectively developed performance by new and emerging performers from the range of participating communities.
Revolution, various festivals, June – Oct 2007
Vulcana Women’s Circus worked with members of the Vulcana community to create
a short new performance work to be performed in outdoor settings using Group
Bike, a Chinese circus skill that requires a high level of ensemble work and
cooperation. The piece told the story of a group of Inventors who discovered
that they could produce electrical energy from a bicycle wheel they happen to
have in their wheelbarrow, to power a light globe. They deduced that there must
be a way to create more energy with more bicycle parts until they had “invented”
the idea of a bicycle made from bodies. To test their radical theory they brought
in a team of Test Riders and their incredible machine and together they unravelled
its secrets making their wildly eccentric structure of lights turn on, as well
as recharging their own pedalling power at the same time. Together this group
devised an exhilarating, humorous and visually striking piece of theatre with
characterisations, costumes and design that audiences appreciated for its style,
entertainment value as well as its circus skills.
Strange Creatures at the Judith Wright Centre, 12 – 16 Dec
2006
Strange Creatures was a 6-month journey from circus workshops
with members of Brisbane’s Deaf community, to a creative development with these
women and hearing women from the Vulcana community of new and emerging circus
performers, to the rehearsals and creation of the new performance work. Not
only was the process about researching and devising the material for the work,
and uncovering the physical languages of the piece, but about the process of
bringing two communities and language groups together to discover how we could
find an ease with communication and an understanding of different perspectives.
Set in a subterranean laundry/ laboratory 20 women investigated how the biotechnical
age has opened the boundaries of the body and challenged ideas about who can
parent. Infertility was examined, disabilities were de-constructed, mothers
were made and washing machines become warehouses of human possibility. The body
of the woman was exposed to surgery, science and the law as she attempted to
gain information about, and access to, reproductive technologies.
Strange
Creatures combined the spectacle of circus with the performance skills
of Auslan* speakers to produce a compelling piece of physical theatre for Deaf
and hearing audiences.
*Australian Sign Language
Topographies in outdoor spaces at the Brisbane Powerhouse,
20 - 23 Sep 2006
Topographies provided the opportunity for 16 emerging and professional
women circus performers to work with experienced physical theatre practitioners,
a multi-media artist and musicians, to create site specific performance pieces
in outdoor spaces around the Brisbane Powerhouse in September 2006. The combination
of music, projected multi-media images and an eclectic array of performance
pieces hiding in corners, brazenly dangling from great heights or emerging from
shadows, made it an exciting and new performance experience for the sold out
audiences who witnessed the event. The musicians, The Semi Circles, created
an original sound score for the 11 individual works and transitions and led
the audience on this performance journey through a highly evocative site.
Bungo the Money God at the Powerhouse Theatre, 30 Nov - 2
Dec 2005
Bungo the Money God was a unique fusion of circus, dance, storytelling
and original music inspired by the urban dreaming story of the same name by
Uncle Herb Wharton. This large scale production developed out of a year long
Indigenous arts and cultural project with Inala’s Indigenous communities and
collaborating organisations Inala Wangarra, Vulcana Women’s Circus, Kooemba
Jdarra, Contact Inc. and Access Arts. The project involved workshops, devising
and rehearsal of the final production. Showings of the developing work were
presented at Stylin’ Up Festival and NAIDOC Week celebrations in Inala.
Bungo the Money God included performances by children through
to Elders as they wove together the story of Bungo through original music and
the spectacular skills of circus, dance and physical theatre. The story of Bungo
was narrated by Inala based hip hop crew
Mild Tace, and performed through
circus and dance by the young and emerging performers. Existing community performers
from Inala – including the Yarning Place Singers (Elders choir), Wagga Wagga
dancers (a traditional Indigenous dance troupe) and singer/performer Darren
Brady - were also invited into the project to contribute to the final production.
The project involved a range of community and arts organisations and provided
skills and resources to the community. The story of Inala and its strengths
as portrayed in the production presented a different narrative of Inala and
Indigeneity to the broader community and brought immense pride to the Inala
community and those in attendance.
Ghosts of a Goddess at the Judith Wright Centre, 10 Sep &
4 Nov 2005
Ghosts of a Goddess was an exhilarating vertical performance
performed on the 4-storey high wall of the Judith Wright Centre for the opening
of the Hands on Elvis and Marilyn Festival in Sep 2005. The performance, using
abseiling and dancing in harnesses, explored the power and influence of the
iconic figure of Marilyn Monroe. The ghosts of Marilyn, supported by a chorus
of ground bound “men”, flew, swung, sailed and seduced the audience to reveal
her status as a complex but alluring symbol of powerful, affirming femininity
as well as tragic and constructed femininity.
Ghosts of a Goddess
was remounted for Vulcana’s 10th anniversary on the external wall of the Brisbane
Powerhouse.
Circus in a Tea Cup at the Visy Theatre, 31 May 2005
Vulcana Women’s Circus in collaboration with
Brisbane
Domestic Violence Advocacy Service (BDVAS) and
Qld Injecting
Health Network (QuIHN) brought together women who have been affected
by domestic or family violence to participate in skills workshops, and devise
and produce their own performance.
Circus in a Tea Cup allowed
the participants to share their experiences of domestic and family violence
in a creative and safe environment, build new relationships with each other
and their support workers, learn new skills and explore an empowering physical
language that builds self-esteem and confidence. Through the integration of
video as a significant part of the performance, we were able to play between
the heightened theatrical images of the circus, that represented a celebration
of how far the performers had travelled, and the ability of video to portrait
the participants as themselves and as an illustration of where they have come
from.
Circus in a Tea Cup provided Vulcana with a very strong
new model for working with community participants to create small but theatrically
rich and artistically supported pieces of physical theatre.
Home Fictions at the Powerhouse Theatre, 16 – 18 December
2004
Home Fictions was a 4-month journey of collaboration and creation
for the ensemble of performers and theatre makers. Together they researched
their own and others fictions about home, the stories of home/land, and the
mythologies that surround these defining yet nebulous concepts. The work explored
the underneath of “home” - from the literal and domestic perspective of being
under the kitchen lino, to the larger, socio-political issue of whose home/land
our comfort zones are built on. Home spaces were suspended in mid air to allowed
the ensemble to physically delve into a subconscious world beneath the kitchen
table, to peel back the layers of memory and history and to transform the realm
of our daily, or nightly, habitation to reveal its poetry, its chaos, its dreaming
and its dangers.
Viva Frida on the Powerhouse Forecourt, 6 & 10 July 2004
Viva Frida was a highly visual stilt performance drawing on
the rich visual imagery of Frida Kahlo’s work (Mexican painter 1907-1954) as
well as the passion and struggle in her life as a woman and a female artist.
Workshop participants devised the piece and the costumes were developed and
constructed with Vulcana community members.
Physicalisms at the Stores Studio, Brisbane Powerhouse, 4
– 6 June 2004
A range of women performers, from emerging to professional, participated in
a mentorship project with the artistic director of
Vulcana Women's Circus
to develop new circus works. The aim was to encourage creative approaches to
circus repertoire in the development of the performance pieces. The result was
a diverse and eclectic range of daring, poignant, funny and highly physical
works that together provided an exciting night of new works.
Young Women and Body Image Project, 2004
The project evolved in response to the gap in community cultural development
programs that engage young women to effectively intervene in negative body imaging
and eating issues. The project gave participants an opportunity to challenge
negative self-perceptions, and build greater self-confidence. The project was
delivered in collaboration with Brisbane Youth Service and ISIS Centre for Action
on Eating Issues.
Young Mums
Vulcana! Turbine Hall of the Brisbane Powerhouse as part
of the Magdalena Women and Arts Festival, 2003
A large ensemble of community performers explored the potential of circus performance
when the limitations of femininity are shrugged off. They took over the spaces
inside the Powerhouse, descending the walls, flying from the roof, and balancing
on balconies.
Cravings at the Powerhouse Theatre Jan 2002
Cravings was set in the bedroom of a 16-year-old girl about
to celebrate her birthday with friends. Through metaphor, narration and circus
the piece explored the far-reaching consequences an obsession with the perfect
body can have on young women. Using physical stunts and a bittersweet humour
it investigated eating disorders and body image. This performance was the first
fully professional performance for Vulcana.
Aviatrix at the Powerhouse Theatre, 4 – 8 Dec 2001
Aviatrix was an imaginative and spectacular romp through 100
years of women’s achievements in Australia using, circus and humour. Taking
their cue from great women pilots in history, the performers embarked on a series
of breathtaking aerial routines, exploring the domestic realm through the daring
and the beautiful.
I'd Rather be a Goddess than a Cyborg at the Powerhouse Theatre,
8 – 11 November 2000
I'd Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess posed the question, what
does it mean to be a woman at the dawn of a new millennium? Set inside a computer
game that pits cyborgs against goddesses the performers investigated the realm
of cyberspace, as a place for women to reinvent themselves, or just another
space where inequities and injustices of material space are remade? Through
circus Vulcana celebrated the whole range of women’s abilities, from glamorous
to gutsy, and everything in between.
