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Frank van Straten | |
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Born | Frank Van Straten 14 May 1936 [1] |
Frank Van Straten AM (born 14 May 1936) is an Australian performing arts historian, author and former director of the Performing Arts Museum.
Van Straten was the first archivist of the Performing Arts Museum (now Australian Performing Arts Collection), at the Arts Centre Melbourne, and its director from 1984 until 1993.
Between 1986 and 2001, he researched and presented ABC Local Radio's Nostalgia segment, broadcast on Melbourne's 774 and the ABC Victorian Regional Network.
In 2002, Van Straten acted as the Historical Consultant for Graeme Murphy's 'dance musical' Tivoli , performed by the Sydney Dance Company, which premiered at the State Theatre, Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Van Straten has served on the board of the National Theatre, Melbourne. He has also served on the judging panels of the Green Room Awards and Helpmann Awards. He is a patron of the Cinema and Theatre Historical Society (Victoria), and a founding member and committee member of the Victoria Theatres Trust (now Theatre Heritage Australia).
In 1999, Van Straten received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in honour of his contributions to the performing arts in Australia.
In 2007, Van Straten was appointed Live Performance Australia's Official Historian.
Van Straten was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours. [2]
Arts Centre Melbourne, originally known as the Victorian Arts Centre and briefly called the Arts Centre, is a performing arts centre consisting of a complex of theatres and concert halls in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, located in the central Melbourne suburb of Southbank in Victoria, Australia.
Reginald Dawson Livermore is an Australian actor, singer, theatrical performer and former television presenter.
Marina Prior is an Australian soprano and actress with a career mainly in musical theatre. From 1990 to 1993, she starred as the original Christine Daaé in the Australian premiere of The Phantom of the Opera, opposite Anthony Warlow and later Rob Guest.
The Green Room Awards are peer awards which recognise excellence in cabaret, dance, drama, fringe theatre, musical theatre and opera in Melbourne.
Ceremonial dancing has a very important place in the Indigenous cultures of Australia. They vary from place to place, but most ceremonies combine dance, song, rituals and often elaborate body decorations and costumes. The different body paintings indicate the type of ceremony being performed. They play an important role in marriage ceremonies, in the education of Indigenous children, as well as storytelling and oral history. The term corroboree is commonly used to refer to Australian Aboriginal dances, although this term has its origins among the people of the Sydney region. In some places, Aboriginal people perform corroborees for tourists. In the latter part of the 20th century the influence of Indigenous Australian dance traditions has been seen with the development of concert dance, with the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts (ACPA) providing training in contemporary dance.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the performing arts in Australia, or produced by Australians. There are theatrical and dramatic aspects to a number of Indigenous Australian ceremonies such as the corroboree. During its colonial period, Australian theatrical arts were generally linked to the broader traditions of English literature and to British and Irish theatre. Australian literature and theatrical artists have over the last two centuries introduced the culture of Australia and the character of a new continent to the world stage.
The Tivoli Circuit was a successful and popular Australian vaudeville entertainment circuit featuring revue, opera, ballet, dance, singing, musical comedy, old time black and white minstrel and even Shakespeare which flourished from 1893 to the 1950s, and featured local and international performers from the United States and the United Kingdom.
John Henry Romeril is an Australian playwright and teacher. He has written around 60 plays for theatre, film, radio, and television, and is known for his 1975 play The Floating World.
Robyn Archer, AO, CdOAL is an Australian singer, writer, stage director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.
Gertrude Emily Johnson was an Australian coloratura soprano and founder of the National Theatre Movement in Melbourne.
Stephen John Sewell is an Australian playwright and screenwriter.
Patricia Lamond Lawman AM, professionally known as Toni Lamond, is an Australian vaudevillian, cabaret performer, singer, actress, dancer, comedian, writer and presenter. She has had a successful career spanning some 80 years, both locally and internationally, including in the United Kingdom and United States
Barbara Angell also known as a performer as Barb Angell, Barbara Angela Angell, Barbara Angel and as a screenwriter Angela Barr – is an Australian actress, playwright/dramatist, composer, lyricist, writer, orchestrator, comedian, director, producer, singer (soprano), dancer/choreographer and ice skater.
Lou Bennett is an Indigenous Australian musician, actor and academic researching Aboriginal languages and their retrieval.
The Australian Performing Arts Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne, formerly known as Performing Arts Museum (PAM), is the largest specialist performing arts collection in Australia, with over 780,000 items relating to the history of circus, dance, music, opera and theatre in Australia and of Australian performers overseas.
Lindy Hume is an Australian opera and festival director, who has worked throughout Australia and internationally.
The Tivoli Theatre was a major performing arts venue in Melbourne's East End Theatre District, located at 249 Bourke Street. The theatre's origins dated from 1866, with various remodelling and rebuilding throughout its history. Its final building opened as the New Opera House in 1901, and was renamed the Tivoli in 1914 when it joined the Tivoli circuit. The Tivoli eventually closed in 1966.
Her Majesty's Theatre is a theatre in Adelaide, South Australia, located on Grote Street, originally built in 1913 as the New Tivoli Theatre. Other names through its history have been the Princess Theatre, the Prince of Wales Theatre, Tivoli Theatre and the Opera Theatre.
Viola Wilson was a Scottish singer, the leading soprano for J. C. Williamson's Gilbert and Sullivan company in Australia during World War II. She married the widowed theatre businessman Frank S. Tait, later Sir Frank.
This is a list of exhibitions held by the Australian Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, organised chronologically and grouped by decade until 2017. Since 2017, the Australian Music Vault has housed a permanent exhibition utilising the APAC collection. The collections on display are rotated regularly. Previous exhibitions have toured nationally and internationally, while other collections are occasionally loaned.