I am an award-winning actor and theatre maker based in Lutruwita/Tasmania. For the past 36 years, I have worked extensively across theatre, television and radio since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts. While I am known as an actor, my career has also spanned producing, directing, arts leadership and creating ambitious theatre projects.
Careers in the arts are rarely constant or linear, but my curiosity about storytelling has remained a constant. Seven years ago, this curiosity led me to explore performance methodologies with leading Australian and international artists, with the ambition of creating original theatre in Lutruwita/Tasmania.
Since then, I have developed a body of work with Tasmanian designers, production creatives and artists, mentoring emerging practitioners and taking artistic risks through intimate, experimental productions in unusual site-specific locations. This work has strengthened my own practice while contributing to Tasmania’s professional theatre sector.
Along the way, I discovered the extraordinary creative potential of working with diverse community members, many with little performing experience. Their desire for expression and commitment to creating work profoundly shifted my thinking and prompted me to explore what theatre can become when it is created within, for and by diverse communities.
This experience has shaped my ambition to help expand who gets to participate in professional theatre and how stories are told. At a time when the sector is grappling with audiences, financial sustainability and the need to reimagine the artform, I believe there is an opportunity to create theatre that is more adventurous, inclusive and connected to its communities.
Through my Churchill Fellowship, I hope to learn from artists and organisations internationally who are pioneering new approaches to community-led and innovative theatre. I will bring those learnings home to continue developing original work and help reanimate the cultural life of Nipaluna/Hobart, Lutruwita/Tasmania and beyond.
Project
The Gallaugher Bequest Churchill Fellowship to investigate how audience integration into making theatre can build community engagement
Jane Longhurst
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