Wolfe Bowart (born May 28, 1962) is a physical comedian, actor, director and playwright. He is the creator and performer of the physical theatre productions LaLaLuna, Letter's End and The Man the Sea Saw. Bowart is the son of writer Walter Bowart and Linda Dugmore, and grandson of the abstract expressionist artist Edward Dugmore.
In 2006, Bowart premiered LaLaLuna, a surreal tale about the night the light went out in the moon, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre during the production’s first Australian tour. Written, directed and performed by Bowart, LaLaLuna contains a poetic narrative by Roscoe Lee Browne. [1] Critic Fergus Shiel of The Age proclaimed the show “luminously inventive and magically silly” and Ari Sharp of The Program wrote “Bowart is the ultimate physical performer. He has a breathtaking awareness of his own body, and glides effortlessly across the stage with balletic skill. His sleight-of-hand is magnificent and fits in so neatly that you sometimes barely notice that it’s there, which allows the audience to be swept away in the dreamy mystique that Bowart seeks to create.” [2]
In 2007, LaLaLuna made its UK premiere at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the London International Mime Festival (see review [3] ). Bowart also undertook a 40-performance national tour of Australia, and presented LaLaLuna at the Volos International Festival in Greece. [4]
In 2008, Bowart performed LaLaLuna in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Greece and Brazil [5] and returned to Australia for seasons in Sydney (see review [6] ), Hobart and in Melbourne at the Arts Centre Melbourne.
Bowart’s 2009 UK tour included performances at the Theatre Royal, Bath, where LaLaLuna headlined the inaugural Family Theatre Festival.
In 2010, Bowart premiered LaLaLuna in New Zealand [7] and Austria, and returned to the UK, [8] where the production was part of the Brighton Festival [9] (curated that year by Brian Eno), the Salisbury International Arts Festival, and completed seasons at the York Theatre Royal (see review [10] ), The Lowry in Salford, and Newcastle's Northern Stage, among others.
Bowart continues to tour LaLaLuna internationally. Recent seasons include the Bahrain Summer Festival (2015), [11] Australia's 2015 Awesome Festival (see review [12] ), and the 2016 Kuala Lumpur International Arts Festival [13] [14] in Malaysia.
Bowart’s production Letter's End, the story of a man inhabiting a magical lost-letter office, made its U.S. premiere in January 2009 in Tucson, Arizona. [15] Bowart's company SpoonTree Productions was awarded a grant from the Australian government to tour Letter's End nationally in 2009. The Australian tour spanned five and a half months and incorporated 43 venues and 91 performances (see reviews [16] [17] [18] ). Reviewing for The Mercury, Robert Jarman noted "the show combines comedy and pathos, mime, magic and sleight of hand, shadow puppetry, film and sound in an exemplary and enchanting mix. The sheer amount of invention is staggering." [19]
In August 2010, Letter's End was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Regional Touring Production. [20]
In 2013, Bowart was again invited to participate at the London International Mime Festival. His season of Letter's End at the Southbank Centre marked the production's UK premiere. (see review [21] ) The French premiere of "Letter's End" followed soon after, [22] during a tour that included dates at the 2013 Festival Effervescences alongside works by Philippe Genty, Daniele Finzi Pasca and James Thiérrée. [23]
Bowart's Australian premiere of The Man the Sea Saw took place in 2011. He undertook a 66-show national tour that spanned 27 venues and concluded with a season at His Majesty's Theatre in Perth, Western Australia, where The Man the Sea Saw headlined the 2011 Awesome Festival. [24]
The adventures of a man adrift at sea on a melting iceberg prompted Perth critic David Zampatti to write "Bowart acts wordlessly but with boundless expression, his silent movie-actor's face, acrobat's body and magician's hands telling us all we need to know." [25]
In 2012, The Man the Sea Saw was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production. [26]
In 2014, Bowart undertook a 7-city of China and South Korea [27] with The Man the Sea Saw. The tour marked Bowart's Chinese premiere.
As artistic director and co-creator of The Shneedles, Bowart, together with fellow clown Bill Robison, have performed in Japan, Singapore, Australia (see review [28] ), Germany, Austria, Spain, Iceland and the U.S. The Shneedles most recently completed a 6-month season in Germany in 2007 for GOP-Varieté Theaters. [29]
As a guest artist at the University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film & Television, Bowart directed From the Fishbowl, an original work co-devised with theatre students. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, it streamed online for a global audience in April 2021. [30] The production features seven actors moving between stage and screen as they explore what it means to live in a world that has become both socially distant and yet somehow more personal. In a review for The Theatre Times, Michael Schweikardt wrote that From the Fishbowl "documents the moment of a young person struggling to come of age during the pandemic better than any oral history or written diary account ever could." [31]
As an artist, Bowart was commissioned to create the masks for the visual theatre production Bocon! by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. [32] As a playwright-performer, Bowart created Harold's Big Feat, [33] which was directed by Peter Brosius and produced by the Mark Taper Forum's P.L.A.Y. (Performing for Los Angeles Youth).
As an actor in the U.S., Bowart has guest-starred on TV programs on ABC, CNBC, the Disney Channel and PBS. On the stage, he has performed in such productions as Moon Over Madness [34] at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, and in The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite [35] at the Mark Taper Forum.
Bowart has also co-written several motion picture and television screenplays on assignment, including “eye-see-you.com,” the season finale episode of the television series The Net for the USA Network, which aired in March 1999.
Bowart is a Theater graduate of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington.
Sir Robert Murray Helpmann CBE was an Australian ballet dancer, actor, director, and choreographer. After early work in Australia he moved to Britain in 1932, where he joined the Vic-Wells Ballet under its creator, Ninette de Valois. He became one of the company's leading men, partnering Alicia Markova and later Margot Fonteyn. When Frederick Ashton, the company's chief choreographer, was called up for military service in the Second World War, Helpmann took over from him while continuing as a principal dancer.
Bangarra Dance Theatre is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance company focused on contemporary dance. It was founded by African American dancer and choreographer Carole Y. Johnson, Gumbaynggirr man Rob Bryant, and South African-born Cheryl Stone. Stephen Page was artistic director from 1991 to 2021, with Frances Rings taking over in 2022.
Constance Lalage "Lally" Katz is an American and Australian dramatist writing for theater, film, and television. She now resides in Los Angeles.
Enda Markey is an Irish-born, Sydney-based, theatrical producer and former singer and actor. He is the producer of the stage productions Side by Side by Sondheim and the international tour of Boublil and Schonberg's Do You Hear The People Sing?, and the Australian revival of Willy Russell's Blood Brothers.
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 Helpmann Awards are accolades for live entertainment and performing arts in Australia, presented by industry group Live Live Performance Australia (LPA) since 2001.
DV8 Physical Theatre was a physical theatre company based at Artsadmin in London, United Kingdom. It was officially founded in 1986 by Lloyd Newson (1986–2015), Michelle Richecoeur (1986–1988) and Nigel Charnock. Lloyd Newson led the company as choreographer and artistic director from its inception, apart from the production My Sex, Our Dance (1986), which was co-created and performed with Nigel Charnock. DV8 officially ended in April 2022 when Lloyd Newson announced his retirement via the company web page.
Stephen George Page is an Australian choreographer, film director and former dancer. He is the former artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, an Indigenous Australian dance company. Page is descended from the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali of the Yugambeh people from southeast Queensland, Australia.
Cheryl Ruth Barker is an Australian operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the late 1980s. She has sung on several complete opera recordings with Chandos Records, including the title roles in Dvořák's Rusalka, Janáček's Káťa Kabanová and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Emilia Marty in Janáček's The Makropulos Case. She has also made two solo recordings of opera arias, one with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor David Parry and the other with Orchestra Victoria and conductor Richard Bonynge. On the stage she has had partnerships with the English National Opera (ENO) and Opera Australia.
Kate Champion is an Australian choreographer and artistic director.
James Millar is an Australian actor, singer and writer. He wrote the musical drama The Hatpin, the song cycle LOVEBiTES and co-wrote the semi-autobiographical musical A Little Touch of Chaos.
Caroline Ann O'Connor is an Anglo-Australian singer, dancer, and actress. For her theatre work she has won three Helpmann Awards: Best Female Actor in a Play for Edith Piaf in Piaf in 2001 and the same category for Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow in 2006, and Best Female Actor in a Musical for Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes in 2015.
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.
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.
Lindy Hume is an Australian opera and festival director, who has worked throughout Australia and internationally.
John Sheedy is an Australian theatre director.
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.
Circa Contemporary Circus is an Australian contemporary circus company. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Circa produces circus productions drawing on acrobatics, movement, dance, music and theatre that tour in Australia and internationally. The company was established in 1987 and was initially named Rock n' Roll Circus. It was an ensemble based contemporary circus company that focus on performing the voice of the people during a politically turbulent time in Queensland, Australia, during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era before shifting to a director led company and was renamed 'Circa' in 2004 under the direction of Yaron Lifschitz.
Alex Rathgeber is an Australian actor and singer, perhaps best known for his Helpmann Award-winning performance as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes. More recently he appeared as the Tin Man in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of The Wizard of Oz.
Tim McGarry is an Australian actor, playwright, and theatre director.