Artistic Leadership

Brett Sheehy (Season 2013 - )

Brett Sheehy is one of Australia's most accomplished and acclaimed directors, producers and curators. He is currently Artistic Director of the Melbourne Festival, and has been Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival (2005-2008), and Festival Director and Chief Executive of Sydney Festival (2002-2005). He will commence with MTC in a part-time capacity from the start of 2012 to program the 2013 Season and will take up a full-time position with the company on the 1 November 2012.

Brett's 2008 Adelaide Festival broke box office and attendance records for the Festival's 48-year history, records he had previously set with his 2006 Adelaide Festival. Through his Sydney Festivals, Brett has presented more events across more artforms than any other outside producer, including dance, drama, opera, music-theatre, visual arts, classical music, contemporary music, jazz, design, film, multi-media events, large-scale sculptural installations and outdoor spectacles.

Prior to joining Sydney Festival, Brett was Artistic Associate, Literary Manager and Deputy General Manager of the Sydney Theatre Company, Australia's largest theatre company.  He was also dramaturg of more than a dozen Sydney Theatre Company productions and workshops. He has also been a Script Assessor for the Australia Council (1989-1990), a Reader for the Australian National Playwrights' Centre (1988-1989), and a member of several bodies, among them the Sydney Writers' Festival Committee (1995-1997), the NSW Centenary of Federation Arts and Events Committee (1998-2001), the Board of the Australian Theatre for Young People (2000-2003), the Committee for Sydney (2001-2005), the Arts Advisory Group of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2004-2006), and he is currently a member of the Artists' Advisory Panel of the Bell Shakespeare Company.

Brett has been a recipient of several awards including two International Society for the Performing Arts Awards (1993 and 1994), the prestigious Mobil Fellowship in Arts Administration (1991), a Qantas International Theatre Scholarship (1987), and a Brisbane Writers' Festival Award for Poetry (1981).  In 1989 Brett edited (with Theresa Willsteed) the award-winning book Sydney Theatre Company 1978 to 1988.

In 2005 Brett was named by the Australian Financial Review Magazine as one of the 20 Australians across all fields to be watched for their impact on society in the next 20 years, and in 2007 he was named by ABC's Limelight magazine as one of the five most influential arts figures in Australia.
 

Robyn Nevin, Pamela Rabe, and Aidan Fennessy (Season 2012)

Our 2012 Season was programmed through the collaboration of these multi-talented and respected artists. Well-known and loved by our Subscribers, Robyn, Pamela and Aidan bring decades of industry experience in directing, acting, writing and programming to the Company.

Robyn Nevin A.M. graduated with NIDA’s first class in 1960. In a career spanning five decades she has acted, directed and produced for all Australian state theatre companies. In 1991 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to the arts. Following Associate Directorships at Sydney Theatre Company (1983-1986) and MTC (1991-1994), Robyn was appointed Artistic Director and CEO at Queensland Theatre Company in 1996, Artistic Director and CEO of Sydney Theatre Company in 1999. Among her directing credits are Shaw’s Major Barbara and Heartbreak House, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House with Miranda Otto, and Hedda Gabler with Cate Blanchett for STC and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. For MTC Robyn has directed Ray Lawler’s The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and KidStakes, and David Williamson's Don Parties On. Robyn has won acting awards including Logies, Helpmanns, the Green Room, Matilda and Sydney Critics Awards. She was a recipient of the Sidney Myer Award, a Keating Fellowship and has an honorary doctorate from University of Tasmania. Most recently, as an actress, Robyn has appeared for MTC in August: Osage County (2009), for which she received a Green Room Award; The Drowsy Chaperone (2010); and Apologia (2011).

Pamela Rabe is best known to audiences as an actor, having appeared in over 35 productions for MTC, including Hamlet, Boston Marriage, God of Carnage, The Season at Sarsaparilla (also for STC), Things We Do for Love, Dinner, Blithe Spirit (also STC), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (also STC), A Little Night Music, Private Lives (also STC), A Room of One’s Own (also for Belvoir), Cosi, Lost in Yonkers, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Medea, and Top Girls. In 2011 she made her directorial debut at MTC with In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play. She also appeared in Bergässe 19: The Apartments of Sigmund Freud for MIAF; Woman-Bomb for Malthouse; The Rover and Miss Julie for State Theatre Company of South Australia; Cho Cho San and Blue Window for Playbox; Gertrude Stein and a Companion for Understudies/Belvoir; The Apple Cart and A Room of One’s Own for the Shaw Festival (Canada); and The Wizard of Oz for Macksent/GFO/IMG.  Pamela’s film credits include The Well (for which she won AFI, Variety Club and Stockholm Film Festival Best Actress Awards), Paradise Road, Cosi, Sirens, and Vacant Possession. Her other many awards include seven Green Room Awards, a Sydney Theatre Critics’ Award and a Mo Award.

Aidan Fennessy is a writer, director, dramaturg and is currently MTC's Associate Director. His plays have been produced by MTC, Queensland Theatre Company, Griffin, HotHouse Theatre, Playbox and White Whale Theatre among others. His play Chilling and Killing My Annabel Lee won the Wal Cherry Award and was short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. His Melbourne International Comedy Festival work The Trade won the prestigious 2002 Barry Award, while Brutopia won the 2010 Griffin Award. His directing credits include Boston Marriage (MTC), Matt Cameron’s Ruby Moon (MTC – Education), Max Gillies and Guy Rundle’s Godzone (MTC), Alan Ayckbourn’s Things We Do for Love (MTC), Ross Mueller’s The Glory (HotHouse), David Mamet’s Oleanna (HotHouse), Robert Ried’s A Mile in herShadow (Store Room Theatre Workshop), Ross Mueller’s A Pilot Version of Something to Die For (StoreRoom Theatre Workshop), and Peter Houghton’s Commercial Farce (Malthouse Theatre), among others. Aidan was a founding member of Chameleon Theatre, a member of the Artistic Directorate of Hothouse Theatre, and Artistic Director of the StoreRoom Theatre Workshop.
 

Simon Phillips (2000-2011)

In his 12 years at MTC, Simon Phillips directed more than thirty-five productions, while overseeing the planning and building of the Company’s new home, the MTC Theatre, and its new Headquarters in Sturt Street. He began his long association with MTC as an Associate Director between 1987 and 1989 and returned to the Company throughout the nineties. His work for MTC has crossed all genre boundaries and include acclaimed productions of Songs for Nobodies, Richard III, Ninety, Rock ’n’ Roll, The Pillowman, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Cyrano de Bergerac, Urinetown, The Visit, The Blue Room, Proof, Company, Bombshells, Man the Balloon, Great Expectations, What the Butler Saw, The Importance of Being Earnest, Serious Money, Tristram Shandy – Gent, Dreams in an Empty City, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, Amy’s View and Arcadia.

Simon trained at the New Zealand Drama School and was Associate Director of the Mercury Theatre in Auckland and Artistic Director of Centrepoint Theatre, Palmerston North. In 1984, he became a lecturer and director at the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts, and from 1990-1993 was Artistic Director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia. He has also directed for Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, Western Australian Theatre Company, Opera Australia, Australian Dance Theatre, Opera NZ, Montreal’s Centaur Theatre, Hamburg Opera and on Broadway. He directed Priscilla – Queen of the Desert the Musical, which premiered on Broadway in March 2011 after successful seasons in Australia, Canada, and on London's West End. In 2011 Simon directed the Australian premiere production of Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.

Simon won Green Room Awards for Best Direction for Richard III (2010), August: Osage County (2009), Lulu (Opera Australia 2003) Proof (2002), Bombshells (2001), Company (2000); and Helpmann Awards for Best Direction of a Play for Inheritance (2004); Best Presentation for Children and Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production for Twinkle Twinkle Little Fish; Best Direction of a Musical for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2006); and Best Direction of a Play for Richard III (2010).