The Faculty of the VCA and Music School of Performing Arts presents the highlights of its Winter 2009 season featuring the talented and bold acting students of Company 2009 in Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman and The Learned Ladies; a diverse and engaging collection of contemporary dance works presented by final year and postgraduate dancers; and our special guest, writer Clem Martini working in collaboration with our postgraduate students behind the scenes.

THEATRE
The 2009 Classic Comedies features two plays by Molière, whose witty satires on social pretensions still bite deep in the 21st century. In The Bourgeois Gentleman Mr Jourdain aims desperately for social skills and graces and is willing to sacrifice his daughter’s love in the bargain. In The Learned Ladies a clutch of ladies desperate for intellectual credibility fight for the attention of the world’s worst poet. Both are hilarious plays in which thwarted love wins out. The visiting directors are Mr Gary Down and Mr Paul Weingott.

DANCE
The Winter season of contemporary Dance performances is the outcome of sustained practical and research-based inquiry and reflect a diverse and engaging collection of contemporary dance works.  

Dancescape 2009 showcase the talents of our second and third year (graduating) dancers in new works by Lina Limosani and Carlee Mellow and remounts of Origami by Phillip Adams, Swarming Auras by Stephanie Lake and Passage Right by Sandy Parker.  Also featured this Winter are new works by PhD candidate Sandra Parker, Masters of Choreography student Soo Yeun You and students of the Postgraduate Diploma in Performance Creation, Gareth Hart, Andrea Hildebrandt, Li Ma, and Claire Rosenhain.

CLEM MARTINI – visiting international artist at the School of Performing Arts
Also at the Faculty of the VCA and Music this Winter, we are excited to host Clem Martini, an award winning playwright and novelist and Head of Drama at University of Calgary. Clem Martini is a leader in social theatre and brings to the Faculty many years of experience writing theatre that deals with the issues of disadvantaged youth.  

“Martini writes spare but muscular prose which vividly conjures landscape, character and situation. He knows how to build narrative and create suspense and maintain reader interest until the very last sentence.” Daily Express, London.

One of the central objectives of the graduate courses in Performance Creation at the Faculty of the VCA and Music is to develop the student’s ability to make meaningful connections between their creative work and the society in which they live. In this context, Clem Martini is collaborating with our students to develop a series of short dramatic texts and performances from a process of interacting with members of various communities in and around Melbourne. These include bushfire survivors, members of the Stolen Generations, single mothers of Ukrainian descent and refugees.

Clem Martini is a visiting artist at the Faculty as part of the 2009 Simplot International Masterclass Series.