theatre in hurt and abandoned spaces
Vision
To create immersive experiences in unusual and forgotten places to shift perceptions and engage in critical dialogues reflecting the significant issues of our time.
Mission
To re-define contemporary theatre by giving artists a home to collaborate, be vulnerable, share their work and stretch their practice.
Through artistic and scholarly research, we address the epic (which are systemic injustice and inequality) by amplifying the domestic (such as themes of trauma and violence).
Core Values
We defy genre, disciplinary boundaries and audience expectations by being audacious and courageous. Expanding the theatre cannon to offer space to create new and diverse work.
Collaboration as a process to learn, (re)learn and (un)learn.
To act with integrity by creating with emotional honesty and always being accountable to artists, audiences and the community.
We build intimate connections by shattering the space between audience/performer and the narrative itself.
The Living Room Theatre Inc is a non-profit DGR/TCC registered organisation founded in 2000 with 26 original works created across two decades.
The Living Room Theatre meets its legal obligations through the support of the Governance and Operations Committees.
Please find time to support us.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
Honouring Our First Nation Storytellers
We have been making work on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people for over twenty years and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.
2022 Company
The Living Room Theatre Board
Governance
Celine Thompson | Chair
Scott Bird | Deputy Chair & Secretary
Suk Hee Lee | Treasurer
Ray Parslow | Member
Operations
Michelle St Anne
Scott Bird
Mark Hill
Marie Papas
Eva Rodriguez Riestra
Bookkeeper
Antonia Connolly
Kameruka Bookkeeping
The Living Room Theatre Collective
Artistic Director
Michelle St Anne
Associate Artistic Director
Jacques Emery
Associate Artist
Imogen Cranna
Ira Ferris
Artist Statement
My works sits in the framework of ‘Composed Theatre’ – a philosophical lens which creates fragments of images, sounds, text that organises and reorganises, to evoke a circuitous environment where the viewer enters a constructed reality.
I manipulate time spaces at the junction of dream logic. I look to destabilise the real and the unreal worlds by bringing together contradictory artforms, media and seemingly disparate collaborators (and a couple of my beloved horses).
My early investigation into the compositional structures of orchestral music led me to ‘Composed Theatre’ – the result is a coded world of theatrical scores rather than scripts.
I ask the performers to play with the relationship with themselves in the topography of space, in time, in rhythm
Obsessed with the state of suffering, I am drawn to work in spaces that feel hurt, bruised, violated. My themes of female desire, the universal desire for something better and the suffering of everyday life. Within these states we find beauty. The private celebrations distilled yet unsettled. There is always something that isn’t quite right.
My work is not about the straight narrative, nor about the theatrical arc but rather what is heart driven, illogical with the narrative meted out through image, light, sound and language.
…how do you go about teaching them something new? By mixing what they know with what they don’t know. Then, when they see vaguely, something that they think they recognise, they think ‘Ah, I know that.’ And then it’s just one more step to ‘Ah, I know the whole thing.’ And their mind thrusts forward into the unknown.
– Pablo Picasso, 1964
Awards
2023
Film – the foul of the air
– Sydney Indie Short Festival – Semi-Finalist
2014
Shortlisted
Earth Hour Awards: She only cries at night
2013
Winner
IDEA Award I Love Todd Sampson: Event
Shortlisted
IDEA Award I Love Todd Sampson: People’s choice
2012
Winner
Woodside Better Business Award with Ray Parslow, Extra Black
Recognised
Australia Business Arts Foundation: Good Practice