Early Phase 2021 – ACT Artists announced to benefit from investment from The Street Theatre

The-Street-Theatre-Liam-Budge-photo-by-Novel-PhotographicThe Street’s response to the severe impact COVID-19 on the arts community is a strong focus on investment in artists and new work.

The 2021 successful applicants of Early Phase – a program where artists work with The Street to develop ideas into concept treatments, are Liam Budge, Emily Clark, Farnoush Parsiavashi and Maura Pierlot.

The Street believes in the remarkable capacity of Canberra artists to speak to our time, and the need for them to be given creative space to make work of vision, ambition, and courage that talks to diverse audiences across Australia.

“You have to be ambitious. You need to take risks. As with a startup, the investor doesn’t make a return until the play starts making money,” says Artistic Director and CEO Caroline Stacey.

“Our supporters have joined us in backing new works for many years. Our donations appeal over the last few years has centered around investment in new works, and most recently in the Early Phase program.”

Early Phase 2021 at The Street offers four artists a supported collaborative concept development process to take the glimmer of an idea, feeling, or impulse through to concept treatment with a professional theatre company.

An artist payment of $5000 together with bespoke development, peer exchange, and professional leaders are all part of the program.

“The 2021 submissions reveal a vibrant, switched on and thoughtful live performance community,” said Arts Programs Producer Shelly Higgs. “It is both exciting and illuminating to understand the creative impulses of our artists.

“Selected participants are all highly committed, curious and talented theatre makers who seek to create work that speaks to now; that question, that provoke, that plant the seeds for change.”

From October through to January 2022, Budge, Clark, Parsiavashi and Pierlot will work with The Street to investigate, clarify and articulate their ideas.

Collectively, they will share their concept development process and individually work with a coach to prepare for pitching their work to a panel of Australian live theatre producers. Throughout the program they will develop an understanding of the creative and producing process of The Street.

Building on their Early Phase work last year, playwrights Adam Broinowski and Dylan Van Den Berg will be entering into the second phase of development of their early concept works.

The Street is also working in development with Associate artists CJ Bowerbird on his play Coward’s Punch and with Anna Johnstone and Stefanie Lekkas on their development of highly physical children’s theatre piece, Mud.

As The Street prepares to open its doors after lockdown, it continues to champion artists and development of new works for Canberra audiences, fuelling creative projects during the good and the bad times, and investing in the future of theatre. Watch this space!


For more information about the Early Phase program and new creative developments at The Street Theatre, visit: www.thestreet.org.au for details.

Image: Liam Budge – photo by Novel Photographic