“So before we get started I just want to do a mic check so can you just say –

say your favourite colour and why?”

“Uh

Green

I am green”

Made in collaboration with photographer and fine artist Sarah Walker, Conversations with Landscapes asks what the worth of nature is and what it takes to elicit human care for non-human things. The work will guide the audience through an interactive installation, merging elements of natural landscapes and the anthropomorphised voices of nature, fusing elements of theatre and fine art.

Through artefacts, photos, videos and snippets of conversations with rainforests, grasslands, islands and jungles, the work will examine the human requirement that nature become relatable, conforming to our anthropomorphised, human-centric views of the world, in order for us to care about it. In this work, unique and precarious Australian landscapes attempt to pass as human-esque, nature as its own diplomat, in order to justify their contested existence. 

All images by Sarah Walker.

“you need to realise that change only comes with Windows of opportunity. They're either created or they are there and you have to see them. When you see them you have to work like the wind because they are rare and it will be a long time before they can come again.”

Our perception of activism does not match the reality. We imagine young people fighting for their future but, as I have been traveling through rainforest restorations, fracking protests and sat in on legal teams coming up with defences for protests, I am struck by how many activists are baby boomers, preparing to use their retirement to fight for the future of their grandchildren and, perhaps, to redeem their own generation.

Rebel is their story. Verbatim theatre, made with the greatest love, respect and gratitude to those who are fighting for our future.

Currently being developed via Zoom with the support, brains and generosity of MUST.

“the cage was very small

And I am very big

And I am a long way from home

Sometimes I get confused

I wonder why I am here and not there

Sometimes I get angry

I guess I did that day

And I am very big

And the cage was very small

And so was he”

A is for Antelope forced into an arranged marriage by some guy called Noah
B is for Buffalo still and stuffed in a museum, glass eyes staring
C is for Chimp, given a new language

Bestiary is an anthology of anthropomorphised animal stories, that speak to the ways in which people have controlled, used and eradicated animals for their own use. This play follows in the tradition of twin genres – dark animal parables told as warnings against human folly and the cuddlier world of modern children’s stories.