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NEON Conversations

NEON CONVERSATIONS

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Following the first Sunday performance of each NEON production, arts journalist and broadcaster Fiona Gruber will be talking to theatre makers and guest panellists about the work, its influences and the bigger picture in which it sits. This conversation series is free; just purchase a ticket to the 4pm performance to secure a seat!

Sunday 17 May
MKA: Theatre of New Writing
Australian Gothic
with Professor Ken Gelder

Sunday 31 May
The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company
Representing the Real vs. Modern Myth Making
with Lally Katz

Sunday 14 June
Dirty Pretty Theatre
The Wolf Within: Madness & Art
with Siann Bowman

Sunday 28 June
Susie Dee & Patricia Cornelius
Here we go, women are back on the agenda!

Sunday 12 July
Elbow Room
Doll Parts: Feminism and Theatre in an Era of Borrowed Prestige
with Clementine Ford

All NEON CONVERSATIONS will take place in the Lawler shortly after the 4pm performance concludes.

Artwork for Lally Katz

Lally Katz

Lally Katz is the most produced Australian playwright of her generation. Her recent work for the stage includes NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH at Belvoir and MTC; and STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU IN PERSON, played at Belvoir and Malthouse before toured in New York, Mexico City, Adelaide and Albury. Lally stars in the television adaptation of STORIES on ABC-TV and it will be published as a memoir by Allen & Unwin in 2015. Previous plays A GOLEM STORY and GOODBYE VAUDEVILLE CHARLIE MUDD both won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH was nominated for a NSW Premiers Literary Award, a Helpmann and an Australian Writers Guild award.

Ken Gelder

Ken Gelder

Ken Gelder is Professor of English and a co-director of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne. His books include Reading the Vampire (1994), the co-authored Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998), Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007) and New Vampire Cinema (2012). He is also editor of The Horror Reader (2000) and The Subcultures Reader: second edition (2005). Over the last few years Ken has been working on colonial Australian material with Dr Rachael Weaver: they have produced a series of anthologies of colonial popular fiction, including the Gothic, and their book The Colonial Journals, and the emergence of Australian literary culture was published in 2014 by UWAP. Ken has written extensively about the Australian gothic; his chapter on the ‘postcolonial gothic’ recently appeared in the Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic (2015).

Siann Bowman

Siann Bowman

Siann is a lecturer in mental health practice in the Allied Health School at La Trobe University. She is an experienced mental health clinician who has worked with adults who have ongoing illness (schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder, schizoaffective disorder, schizophreniform psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder), mothers and babies (post-partum psychosis, post-partum depression), and people with serious eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, eating disorder NOS). Siann has spent the majority of her career working in early psychosis. She is also currently working in emergency departments in Melbourne to address the need of mentally ill individuals requiring assistance in crisis. Siann’s role at the university is establishing curriculum and lecturing in mental health practice. She has presented at many international conferences and has trained therapists in Europe on the assessments, interventions and application of the cognitive behavioural case management early psychosis model of practice.

Clementine Ford

Clementine Ford

Clementine Ford is a Melbourne based writer and social commentator with a specific focus on gender politics and social justice. She is a committed campaigner against sexual violence, rape culture and misogyny. In 2012, she was voted one of Australia’s Most Influential Female Voices. More recently, she has been a contributing author to Destroying the Joint, an anthology of essays on feminist activism; Just Between Us, a collection of essays exploring female friendships; and an as yet untitled anthology of essays exploring the prime ministership of Julia Gillard. She also writes regularly for Daily Life, Fairfax Media’s news, opinion and lifestyle site.