SLEEPLESSNESS

August 2022 | Carriageworks, Parramatta Riverside.

Commissioned by Carriageworks, produced by Bureau of Works and WEREWOLF

  • Part-mystery, part-documentary, part forensic investigation, Kaz Therese’s Sleeplessness is a quintessentially Australian story. Focused on three generations of Sydney women, the performance fuses drama and documentary, to throw light on the intergenerational impacts of institutionalisation and migration.

    From Budapest 2003 to Sydney in 2022, Kaz Therese too on a profoundly personal 18 year journey to create Sleeplessness, uncovering family history, werewolf mythology, and bearded ladies. Fusing film, text and choreography, this acclaimed contemporary practitioner throws a fine light on the intergenerational impact of institutionalisation and migration.

  • Writer/Performer: Kaz Therese
    Co-Writer and Director: Anthea Williams
    Cultural Leadership: Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grosvenor
    Sound Designer: Anna Liebzeit
    Video Artist: Zanny Begg
    Choreographer: Martin del Amo
    Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
    Associate Artist/Stage Manager: Anastacia Mowen

  • “Brave... haunting...wonderful. Sleeplessness should be widely seen.” – Keith Gallasch, Realtime

    ”Kaz Therese has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in Australian culture...” – Ben Eltham, 2017

    “***** (five stars) Sleeplessness is raw, engaging and unmissable"
    – AU Review

    “**** (4 stars) Fearless and Compelling"
    – Suzy GoSee


CLASS ACTIONS

  • CLASS ACTIONS is a participatory social artistic project, exploring our shared and lived experiences of class via labour, trauma, love and care in an era of radical change. Guided by the artists’ embodiments of living through poverty within underclass communities (across three - generations/identity intersections), CLASS ACTIONS aims to better understand Class stratification in Australian culture.

    Have you ever struggled with money? Have you ever worried about housing insecurity? Have you ever had to borrow money for food? In this period of unfurling crises, how do we care-fully (co)exist in a world of ongoing precarity?

    Collaborating artists Elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor, Kaz Therese and James Hazel each share a lived experience of poverty coming from underclass communities and working within the systems of class making in Australia. CLASS ACTIONS will be developed around Aunty Rhonda's Cultural Practice as a First Nations Elder, Kaz Therese’s creative practice and research into public address systems titled Radical Kindness, and James Hazel’s pre(care)ious score methodology.

  • Collaborating Artists: Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grosvenor, Kaz Therese, James Hazel.
    Presented by:     WEREWOLF, Carriageworks and CEMENTA Festival

ACTION STAR

Premiering 2022 OZASIA FESTIVAL Adelaide Festival Centre

  • Premiering 2022 OZASIA FESTIVAL Adelaide Festival Centre


    Fusing martial arts, dance, storytelling and film, ACTION STAR is a new solo dance performance that details the life and work of celebrated Western Sydney artist and international action movie star, Maria Tran.

    Maria is known for developing the martial arts action film genre in Australia, via the Asian diaspora communities of Western Sydney. Maria’s work is pivotal to the creative development of the Australian Vietnamese film movement that challenges gender stereotypes and the exploration of ‘female action’.

  • Performer and Co-writer: Maria Tran
    Director and Co-writer:     Kaz Therese
    Choreographer:     Larissa McGowen
    Associate Artistic:     Takashi Hara
    Performer/Stage Manger:     Therese Chen
    Dramaturg:     Kate Armstrong-Smith
    Film Maker/Design:     Zanny Begg
    Sound:     Jack Prest and James Brown

TRIBUNAL

2016 Premiere at Griffin Theatre, Sydney Opera House (2017), Carriageworks, Sydney Festival, ArtsHouse Melbourne, PYT, Museum of Contemporary Art.

  • TRIBUNAL is an ambitious new participatory performance project that brings together Indigenous Elders, artists, human rights activists, lawyers, young leaders and outlaws. An Australian Truth and Reconciliation Tribunal was created to interrogate and explore notions of truth and lies around the labels of ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’. TRIBUNAL addresses Australia’s history by telling the parallel stories of indigenous Australia and newly arrived refugees. Fusing performance with legal procedure, personal history and intimate conversations, TRIBUNAL works to create a new democracy for our times.

  • Aunty Rhonda Grovenor-Dixon, Mahdi Mohammadi, Kaz Therese, Jawad Yacoubi, Katie Green, Paul Dwyer, Chris Ryan, Province Studio (Laura Pike & Anne-Louise Dadek), James Brown, Emma Lockhart- Wilson, Patrick Howard, Joe Tan

  • “A genuinely radical work of theatre…both moving and profoundly satisfying. A meaty and quietly passionate play that picks at the scabs of Australian politics and identity” – Ben Eltham 2017

    ‘‘We will bear witness to the hurt and damage done by successive Australian government policies to both Indigenous people and asylum seekers, and contemplate their resilience and creativity despite the odds”     – Guardian 2017

PLAYLIST

Presented at the Sydney Opera House for Festival UnWrapped 2019, National Tour 2020, produced by Arts On Tour, produced by PYT Fairfield.

  • PLAYLIST is a compelling dance-theatre work exploring the state of feminisms in pop culture and music today. Full of suburban dreams and pop star fantasies, it is a call to action about the critical issues of our times.

    Living in the #MeToo world, PLAYLIST explores the experiences, ideas and power of young women and asks, ‘who is going to shape the future for women in Australia?’

  • Director: Karen Therese
    Choreographer: Larissa McGowan
    Performers/Co-Devisors: Ebube Uba, May Tran, Tasha O’Brien, Mara Knezevic and Neda Taha
    Designer: Zanny Begg
    Co-Sound Designer: Jasmine Guffond & Gail Priest
    Lighting: Amber Silk
    Dramaturg: Kate Armstrong-Smith
    Associate Artist: Kilia Tipa
    Stage Manager: Patrick Howard

  • “ELECTRIFYING AND EVERY SYNONYM THEREOF.”

  • HELPMANN AWARD Nomination for Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production, 2019.

THE WOMEN OF FAIRFIELD

  • Presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art, WOMEN OF FAIRFIELD brings together contemporary artists of extraordinary talent with members of the local community. It is the first contemporary public art project of this nature in Fairfield.

    Women of Fairfield presents two twilight art walks featuring large scale immersive installations and live performances created by leading contemporary artists Kate Blackmore, Hissy Fit & Maria Tran, Claudia Nicholson, and Zoe Scoglio working in collaboration with over 100 local women.

    Women of Fairfield has been Co-curated by Artistic Director Kaz Therese and MCA Senior Curator Anne Loxley with Community Arts Director: Jiva Parthipan.

    More info: mca.com.au/artists-works/c3west/women-fairfield_2

  • ‘Contemporary art culture and community culture combined to create something wholly new – something of and for Western Sydney – which can never be repeated in anpther space.’
    - Jane Howard, ‘Australian theatre 2016: the ten most groundbreaking shows by women’, The Guardian, 21 December 2016

  • Winner of the FBi Sydney Music and Cultural Award: BEST ARTS PROGRAM 2016

FUNPARK

FUNPARK was founded in 2012 and premiered as part of the 2014 Sydney Festival.

  • FUNPARK is a radical new site responsive live art initiative developed in collaboration with the Mt Druitt community.

    The amusement parks that once graced Mount Druitt are long gone, but in collaboration with local residents, Australia’s boldest performance makers are welcoming back the crowds for a different kind of ride. Developed with local communities, FUNPARK merged fantastical dream worlds with contemporary experiences. Walking through the disused Bidwill Plaza and surrounds audiences stumbled into an interactive arcade cinema, a political rock opera, a spontaneous hula-hooping marathon and had an intimate chat over tea with a local.

  • Over the past 10 years, FUNPARK has become a sustained collective impact project, led by a coalition of five acclaimed companies: Blacktown City Council through Blacktown Arts; Bidwill Uniting; CuriousWorks; Learning Ground; and PYT Fairfield and residents. FUNPARK 2020 will highlight the narratives of Mt Druitt youth and its residents through unique and critical expression of Australian cultures.

THE COMFORT ZONE

Premier: Liveworks Festival, Performance Space Sydney 2010, Centre for Performance Research New York 2010, University of Wollongong 2010.

  • Comfort: Contentment, ease, something relieving suffering or worry.

    What makes us comfortable? What do we do to maintain our personal comfort? The collaboration investigates 'The Comfort Zone Theory' as defined by business analyst and psychologist Alistair White. This theory is used ironically to measure the anxiety levels of both performer and audience. The work draws from business development strategies such as 'performance management'', 'performance development', and 'performance incentives'. The lecture provokes the audience through survey questions, graphs and statistical evidence, which relates both to their immediate experience of comfort and the comfort they find within themselves in relation to the broader society.

    Working within the juncture of lecture performance, television journalism, and business conference models, the subject matter provides opportunities for many provocations and questions about the very practice of performance and our culture of creating performance. While the work utilizes these discoveries to comment on the complexities of our modern-day relationship to love and intimacy.

  • Karen Therese (performer/writer), Chris Wilson (video artist) and Tiffany Bakker (journalist).

  • “Karen Therese's solo work is ...adventurous and certainly one of the best...brave...haunting and wonderful.” – RealTime

THE WATERLOO GIRLS

After a successful first season as part of Performance Space’s WALK series in April 2011, The Waterloo Girls is returning for two nights only as part of the NSW Reconciliation Council 'Our Place' series.

  • The Waterloo Girls is a traverse through the lives and places of four generations of women who live in Waterloo. The women engaged in this project have all at some stage in their lives, attended the Waterloo Women and Girls Centre.

    This project invites audiences on a walking tour with Leanne, Becs and Kiarna to spaces and places that have defined them. The Waterloo Girls investigates how their community has shifted through the generations, as demography and the needs of the community have changed.

  • Collaborating artists: Karen Therese and Lisa Duff

    With: Leanne Haines, Becs Riley, Kiarna Dungay, Kameliah Dungay, Aunty Kaye Hookey, Susan Fowler, Sharne Dunsmore and Dolly Brown.

  • “Karen Therese's solo work is ...adventurous and certainly one of the best...brave...haunting and wonderful.” – RealTime

JUMP FIRST
ASK LATER

World Premier: Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne, National Tour Produced by Performing Lines, Screened on ABC IVIEW, Presented in South Africa as art of ASSITEJ.

Produced in collaboration with Force Majeure.

  • Jump First, Ask Later is an urban choreographic portrait of the streets of Fairfield in Western Sydney, the most culturally diverse region in Australia.

    This work tells the collective stories of six young people, champions of Fairfield’s underground Parkour and street style community.

    The show merges urban freestyle forms with contemporary dance to create a physical narrative that explores the poetics of violence, migration, redemption and ultimately the collective freedom these artists discovered by mapping their city through dance.

  • Choreographer: Byron Perry
    Creative Producer:     Kaz Therese
    Sound Design:     Luke Smiles
    Video Design:     Sean Bacon
    Tour Rehearsal Director:     Larissa McGowan
    Performers:     Dauntless Movement Crew

  • WINNER: Helpmann Award Best work for young people 2016

    WINNER: Australian Dance Award: Best work for Young people 2016