Tanya Gerstle
Lecturer
Acting
Tanya has worked as a performer, performance maker, director, dramaturg, research/writer, theatre administrator and teacher in Europe and Australia. She has an honours degree in Theatre Studies, has trained in France with The Roy Hart Theatre Company, in Poland at the Drougie Studio, Wroclav, in London at RADA and with KISS: International Theatre Research. In Australia, Tanya has been a performing member of many companies, including: Anthill (Melbourne), Fools Gallery (Canberra), Sidetrack Performance Group (Sydney) and New Moon Theatre Company touring North Queensland. She has toured nationally in mainstream work, and most recently was a performer and Associate Director on Arabian Nights, for the State Theatre Company of S.A.From 1986 to 1991 Tanya was based in Amsterdam creating and performing her own work. She co-created and directed several performance works with groups of physical performers of different nationalities, collaborated with performance poets/singers on projects, which toured Europe and co-created and performed Babushka, a physical performance piece which she performed throughout The Netherlands. In England, she directed The House of Bernada Alba by Garcia Lorca, The Book of Quotations for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and 1992:Christoforo Colombo Viaggio Nel Pianeta Arte for Plexus International, playing in Rome, Sardinia and New York. In New York Tanya collaborated with Butch Morris an improvisational jazz conductor and began her evolving research into improvisational performance structures and their application to performance training practice.
On returning to Australia, Tanya continued her work with multi-lingual, physical performers co-creating and directing Noroc for Urban Theatre Projects and Hungry, which was invited to the 1998 Adelaide Festival. Tanya has been an acting trainer and director at the Oxford School of Drama, England, Studio Wokalno Actorskie, Poland, The Actors Studio and The Artists Institute, Amsterdam and The Performance Space, Sydney Theatre Company, University of NSW, University of Western Sydney and NIDA. From 1996 to 1998, Tanya was the Co-Artistic Director of The Actors Centre, Sydney and in 1998, she was appointed a con-joint fellow of Newcastle University. She has been a Lecturer in Acting at The Victorian College of the Arts since 1999 and has been Head of Acting since 2007. In 2001 Tanya was the recipient of a Teaching Excellence Award and in 2003 was invited to teach at Penn State University, Pennsylvania, on a teaching exchange. Currently, Tanya is working on her 17th performance piece at the VCA, adapting, designing and directing Yes, a film by Sally Potter.