Touring fund enables exposure for seven exciting productions across regional NSW

Bangarra Dance Theatre - Nyapanyapa, OUR land people stories by Jhuny-Boy BorjaMore audiences across regional NSW will have access to productions including David Greig’s acclaimed play The Events and works from Bangarra Dance Theatre thanks to Regional Arts Touring funding of $282,603 from Create NSW.

Seven professional music, dance and theatre organisations will share their productions across the state, and amongst them re-engage forgotten Country Halls and bring contemporary performance to urban skateparks.

Create NSW CEO Michael Brealey said that increasing support for organisations outside of Sydney is important in improving access to contemporary arts and cultural opportunities for communities in regional NSW.

“The cost of touring can often be prohibitive to regional organisations, both for venues and presenting companies, but sharing their productions across the state has a great benefit in strengthening local connections to arts and culture and ensuring that some of the state’s best work can be seen by more people,” said Mr Brealey.

“As a priority area for us, we are delighted to help cover these costs as we look to improve regional community engagement and raise the profile of arts and cultural practice from across the state. “With such a strong quality of diverse productions being generated in NSW, we want to extend these exciting productions so that the wider state also gets to share in these experiences. There is an incredible pool of talent to be shared.”

For more information on arts, screen and cultural funding, including targeted support opportunities, visit: www.create.nsw.gov.au for details.

Image: Bangarra Dance Theatre, Nyapanyapa – OUR land people stories – photo by Jhuny-Boy Borja


Regional Arts Touring Recipients:

Bangarra Dance Theatre ($74,588)
Each year Bangarra Dance Theatre commits to sharing its mainstage national productions with regional audiences across Australia. In 2018, Bangarra’s touring party of 19 artists and nine production crew will bring its highly acclaimed triple bill, OUR land people stories for three NSW performances across Newcastle and Dubbo (for an estimated audience of over 1,500 people) before performing at five additional locations across QLD and NT.

Branch Nebula ($49,974)
Snake Sessions is a performance work and touring model developed by Branch Nebula from ten years of practice creating performance with street-style artists. Snake Sessions brings an audience to a skatepark to share street culture as a powerfully dramatic and artistic experience – virtuosic, yet deeply democratic and accessible. It fuses spectacular street-style artforms, by Hall of Fame practitioners, with rigorous contemporary arts practice. The project will engage local skatepark users over a week culminating in an explosive performance in which local skaters perform alongside the touring company, in a performance they have made together for their community.

City of Parramatta for National Theatre of Parramatta ($32,747)
A regional NSW tour of Jane Harrison’s highly acclaimed and seminal play, Stolen, on the 20th anniversary of its premiere. The tour starts in Sydney and travels to Orange, Griffith, Cessnock, Tamworth and Byron, with a total of 16 performances and an expected audience of over 6,000. The tour includes performances, Q&A sessions and workshops and offers employment and participation for five artists and production crew plus the creatives involved with the remount (i.e. Director, designer) over a period of five weeks (including remount).

Company B Ltd ($38,995)
A regional NSW tour of the highly-acclaimed production of The Events by David Greig to Tamworth, Lismore and Wollongong following a season at Black Swan Theatre Company in Perth. This tour capitalises on the Black Swan season with both a share in remount costs and by taking advantage of the availability of original cast member Catherine McClements for a limited number of dates following the Perth season. The tour comprises 10 performances with an estimated audience of 3268, provides employment for 10 artists and crew, and the opportunity for up to 10 community choirs to participate in the show.

Illawarra Performing Arts Centre Ltd for Merrigong Theatre Company ($56,638)
The New South Wales tour component of the successfully funded national tour of Merrigong Theatre Company’s production of Letters to Lindy by Alana Valentine. The NSW component consists of 16 performances in 10 venues across regional NSW, Western Sydney and Metropolitan Sydney including Tamworth, Bathurst, Griffith, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Newcastle, Wyong, Parramatta and Belrose. The tour is expected to reach a total audience of 4,580 across the state. The subsequent national tour takes in an additional nine venues across a further three states. The total length of the tour is 10 weeks and includes a touring party of six.

Red Dirt Road Productions for The Country Halls Tour ($13,000)
The Country Halls Tour, now in its sixth year, is a tour where alt-country artist, Fanny Lumsden and her band the Thrillseekers put on an ‘all-in-community-night-out’ in Halls throughout regional and remote Australia. Raising funds for the halls as they go, Fanny features local artists and acts, runs workshops and puts on a good old-fashioned show in places usually forgotten on the touring route.

Shiny Shiny Productions (Ironing Maidens) ($16,661)
The Ironing Maidens is a live electronic music performance art piece which explores the topics of domesticity, technology and the history of women in electronic music. The Ironing Maidens will tour NSW regional centres and utilise the town’s main laundromat as an experimental performance space. The performance will be accompanied by a public workshop, focussing on electronic music production (EMP) and electronic instrument making. This project will offer employment and participation for three artists and three crew members over a three-week period.