Phamaly Theatre Company, also known as just Phamaly, is a theater group and touring company based in Denver, Colorado, formed entirely of people with disabilities from across the spectrum. Phamaly was founded in 1989 by five people living with disabilities who wanted to create a theatre company that provided individuals like them with the opportunity to perform. Since their debut, Phamaly Theatre Company (PTC) has produced more and more shows each year, including original works which have received multiple local awards, such as Denver Post Ovation Awards, Westword Awards, and Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Awards. The company's season also includes various touring and educational shows.
The Green Room Awards are Australian peer awards which recognise excellence in cabaret, dance, theatre companies, independent theatre, musical theatre, contemporary and experimental performance, and opera. The awards, which were established in 1982, are based in Melbourne, Victoria.
Richard John Mills is an Australian conductor and composer. He was the artistic director of Victorian Opera from 2013-2023, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001).
Restless Dance Theatre, formerly Restless Dance Company, is a dance theatre company based in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Founded in 1991, Restless works with people with and without disability.
The notion of postdramatic theatre was established by German theatre researcher Hans-Thies Lehmann in his book Postdramatic Theatre, summarising a number of tendencies and stylistic traits occurring in avant-garde theatre since the end of the 1960s. The theatre which Lehmann calls postdramatic is not primarily focused on the drama in itself, but evolves a performative aesthetic in which the text of the performance is put in a special relation to the material situation of the performance and the stage. The postdramatic theatre attempts to mimic the unassembled and unorganized literature that a playwright sketches in the novel.
Garry Stewart is an Australian dancer and choreographer. He was the longest-serving artistic director of the Australian Dance Theatre, taking over from Meryl Tankard in 1999 and finishing his term at the end of 2021. He is renowned for his unusual, post-modern interpretations of classical ballets.
Jack Thorne FRSL is a British playwright, television writer, screenwriter, and producer.
Disability in the arts is an aspect within various arts disciplines of inclusive practices involving disability. It manifests itself in the output and mission of some stage and modern dance performing-arts companies, and as the subject matter of individual works of art, such as the work of specific painters and those who draw.
The physically integrated dance movement is part of the disability culture movement, which recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical model construct but as a social phenomenon, through artistic, literary, and other creative means.
Scott Rankin is an Australian theatre director, writer and co-founder and creative director of the arts and social change company Big hART. Based in Tasmania, Rankin works in and with isolated communities and diverse cultural settings, as well as in commercial performance.
Kip Williams is an Australian theatre and opera director. Williams is the current Artistic Director of Sydney Theatre Company. His appointment at age 30 made him the youngest artistic director in the company's history.
Tilda Cobham-Hervey is an Australian actress. She made her film debut in 52 Tuesdays, a critically-acclaimed independent film directed by Sophie Hyde, and has also appeared on stage. She appeared in the 2018 film Hotel Mumbai, and starred as feminist icon Helen Reddy in the 2019 biopic I Am Woman. In 2023 she starred in the Amazon Prime TV series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.
Deirdre Heddon, is Professor of Contemporary Performance at the University of Glasgow (UK). She is a practice-based researcher and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as academic monographs and book-chapters. Her focus of interest is in autobiographical performance, site-specific performance and walking art.
Theatre and disability is a subject focusing on the inclusion of disability within a theatrical experience, enabling cultural and aesthetic diversity in the arts. Showing disabled bodies on stage can be to some extent understood as a political aesthetic as it challenges the predominately abled audience's expectations as well as traditional theatre conventions. However, the performance of disabilities on stage has raised polarising debates about whether the performers are exposed and reduced to their disability or whether they have full agency of who they are and what they represent.
Esther Hannaford is an Australian singer and actor who has performed major roles in musical theatre in Australia. Her roles include Penny Pingleton in the original Australian cast of Hairspray, for which she received a Helpmann Award, Ann Darrow in King Kong, and Carole King in Beautiful.
Ilbijerri Theatre Company, formerly Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative and also known simply as Ilbijerri, styled ILBIJERRI, is an Australian theatre company based in Melbourne that creates theatre creatively controlled by Indigenous artists.
Mark Leonard Winter is an Australian actor, known for performances in film, television and on stage.
Georgina Naidu is an Australian actress, stage writer and university lecturer from Melbourne.
Liselle Terret is a co-programme leader and a senior lecturer at the University of East London. She has more than twenty years of experience within the field as a teacher, facilitator and manager of Applied Theatre related projects within and outside of the UK working with a diverse selection of groups.
Roslyn Oades is an Australian actress, puppeteer and theatre maker.
