About the session

This session took place on Monday 7 December, 2020, 12-2pm AEDT.

In this first session of Music Theatre Futures, we will begin with an Acknowledgement of Country led by Head of the Wilin Centre at the Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, Tiriki Onus.

This will be followed by an opening address from Jayde Kirchert, Lecturer in Music Theatre at the Faculty of Fine Arts & Music and Project Lead of Music Theatre Futures, and an overview of the week’s program.

From 1pm, Tiriki will return to present and discuss First Nations perspectives on Cultural Literacy to ground the week of rigorous conversation and learning.

About the speakers

• Jayde Kirchert

  Jayde completed a Bachelor of Music Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) and after a brief stint working in professional music theatre as an actor, she turned to before directing and writing. In 2014 she completed a Post Graduate Diploma of Arts majoring in Anthropology (University of Melbourne) and is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Arts (Music Theatre) at VCA (University of Melbourne).

  She has directed and written multiple critically acclaimed productions through her company Citizen Theatre, of which she is Artistic Director. Most recent Citizen Theatre works she has led as director/dramaturge include Forgotten Places – an immersive experience at Chapel Off Chapel and Kingston Arts Centre (supported by City of Stonnington and City of Kingston) and When The Light Leaves at La Mama Theatre (supported by the City of Melbourne) and Gasworks Arts Park. As a writer and director she has created Ascent for Theatre Works’ 2018 Melbourne Fringe Festival program (supported by ShowSupport), Nude for the 2014 Melbourne Cabaret Festival and remounted in 2015 at the Alex Theatre and in 2021 will unveil the world premiere of her new sci-fi feminist music theatre work Mara KORPER at Theatre Works in 2021 (supported by the City of Port Phillip and Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, University of Melbourne).

  Jayde is thrilled to be the 2020 recipient of the Monash University Jeanne Pratt Artist In Residence commission, along with Peter Rutherford, to create a new feminist Vaudevillian spectacular, The 100 Year Revue.

  In addition to being a lecturer and teaching artist at VCA, she has also been a director and dramaturge for many new Australian works for the Melbourne Cabaret Festival, Poppy Seed Festival, Melbourne Comedy Festival and at VCA, as well directing VCA Music Theatre’s Morning Melodies concert at Hamer Hall in 2019.

  Jayde’s extensive background in dance and physical theatre converges with her training and research in music theatre and feminist dramaturgies, giving her work a distinctly elegant, yet playful and at times subversive aesthetic, and a consciousness that allows her work to speak to pertinent social issues of our time.

• Tiriki Onus

  Tiriki Onus is a Yorta Yorta man and Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, University of Melbourne. He is a successful visual artist, curator, performance artist and opera singer.

  His first operatic role was in the premiere of Deborah Cheetham’s Pecan Summer in October 2010, which he reprised in 2011, and 2012 for the Melbourne and Perth runs. He received the Dame Nellie Melba Opera Trust’s Harold Blair Opera Scholarship in 2012 and 2013. In 2015 he was the inaugural Hutchinson Indigenous Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

   

Watch the recording

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