Category Archives: Expressive Arts

Expressive Arts – anything theatre, creative writing or digital media production at Massey University

Climate Change Creative Writing – Third Place Winner

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“Recycling Worlds: A Collation of Works”

By Melanie Ferguson

Author’s note: “This piece deliberately enacts a recycling, by reusing and repurposing fragments of older works, that are fully referenced in footnotes. The words used are from four countries and three centuries, connecting ideas across time and space. All borrowings of material in this essay are limited to brief passages used for critical purposes, and are fully acknowledged in the references. I apologise in advance for any inadvertent infringements of copyright, which I will be happy to rectify as soon as they are brought to my attention.”

I stood in my garden pulling loquats off the tree and eating them to be full of spring[1]; a tree that may have spent further time as a house or classroom, or a bridge or pier. Or further time could be spent floating on the sea or river, or sucked into a swamp, or stopping a bank, or sprawled on a beach bleaching among the sand, stones and sun[2].

The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber[3]. And further west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars[4]. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine[5]. A ray peers into the room of your eye . . . . Why is our art so introverted? It doesn’t mean a thing – to the seagull or sun – the clouds don’t understand – a word – their language is silence[6]. His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me… washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin on my face[7]. And if several people talk at once an overlapping howling noise begins, echoes generate echoes[8]; our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps – perhaps[9]; the tree, after a lifetime of fruiting, has, after its first death, a further fruiting at the hands of a master. This does not mean that the man is the master of the tree… He is master only of the skills that bring forward what was already waiting in the womb of the tree[10].The new things born there console or constellate they measure space they keep time. But who wrote this story? And before writing who told it to us that we tell it over and over? [11] With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed – and gazed again, losing my breath through my eyes – my very soul diffused itself in the scene[12]; You are of me and I of you, I cannot tell – Where you leave off and I begin[13].

[1] Michele Leggott, “a woman, a rose, and what has it to do with her and they with one another?”, as far as I can see. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999.

[2] Patricia Grace, p. 7, Potiki. 1986. Auckland: Penguin, 2010.

[3] Ernest Hemingway, p. 133, “Big Two Hearted River: Part I.” In Out Time. 1925. New York: Macmillan, 2003.

[4] Joseph Conrad, p.5, Heart of Darkness. 1899. London: Penguin, 2007.

[5] Emily Bronte, p. 180, Wuthering Heights. 1847. Great Britain: Wordsworth Editions, 2000,

[6] Graham Lindsay, from “Cloud Silence” The Subject. 1994. Retrieved from NZEPC Oct. 5th, 2017.

[7] J.M. Coetzee, p. 157, Foe. 1986. London: Penguin, 2010.

[8] E.M. Forster, p. 137, A Passage to India. 1924. London: Penguin, 2010.

[9] Virginia Woolf, p. 129-30, Mrs Dalloway. 1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

[10] Patricia Grace, p. 7, Potiki. 1986. Auckland: Penguin, 2010.

[11] Michele Leggott, from the back cover of DIA. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1994.

[12] Mary Wollstonecraft, p.72, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. 1796. Canada: Broadview Press, 2013.

[13] Susan Howe, Articulation of Sound Forms in Time. Windsor, VT: Awede, 1987.

Climate Change Creative Writing – Shortlisted

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A Mother’s Fury

By Eden Shearer

Mother will not stop yelling

She is casting cyclones

That are destroying precious lives

 

She has become a home-wrecker

Sowing the seeds

Of volcanic eruptions

 

She is angry

Causing innocent feet

To flee from their homes

To run far away

 

We are too scared to look her in the eye

So we keep running

Hoping for grass that is greener on the other side

Only to find that there is nothing left

 

When will we learn

To stop arguing with our Mother

And to start implementing change?

 

It is about time we cleaned up our mess

And as they always say, Mother knows best

 

It is too late to diffuse her temper completely

But we can still use our actions

To decelerate her intensity

 

Let’s turn mindlessness

Into mindfulness

 

Oh Mother Earth, we can hear you.

 

Climate Change Creative Writing – Shortlisted

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 Always

By Janet Newman

 

The river always

finds a way

down from the ranges

through the plain

to the sea

 

although sometimes it takes

a circuitous route

around corrals of cliffs,

through macrocarpa roots,

sometimes cross country,

clear across old stones

 

because the river has a way

of folding back

on its way forward,

lengthening and stretching out long and wide

as it takes its time

 

as it longs to find its way

by longing for the sea

 

and in longing reveals

the length of its persistence

 

which is something to long for

however slow

 

the way any life

sometimes doubles back,

folding and looping

 

because the river

always finds the sea

by following

a doubtless course

 

sometimes doubling back

but always moving

eventually

forward.

Climate Change Creative Writing – Second Place Winner

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Flood

By Janet Newman*

When the floodwaters rose up

covering the plain with mirrors and veils

 

our backyards looked like other people’s

and the roads we drove failed under rivers

 

that seemed to have been there longer than we had.

Belongings stacked on pool tables sagged.

 

Sixteen sand bags might as well have been a cache of illegal toheroas

for all the good they could muster

 

against the weight of water

spilling over the stopbanks.

 

When the floodwaters rose up

we sank down

 

into our steamed-up cars if we could find them,

our fire-warmed lounges if we could reach them,

 

watching the rain gauge, the tide times,

the insurance claim, the surge line.

 

We wrote everything down in the record books

but the numbers didn’t look like much

 

because we’d stopped feeling

like we were the ones who counted.

 

When the floodwaters rose up

we sank back down to the bush

 

with the weka

and the powelliphanta snails

 

and the katipo

clinging to waterlogged webs

 

and peketua, paddling,

holding up their heads.

*Flood was first published in Atlanta Review (New Zealand) Spring/Summer 2017 and is republished here with kind permission of the editor.

 

Penguins on stage and street in climate change action – Massey University

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Donning Catherine Bagnall's costumes for the 'Becoming Penguin' walk are fourth year fashion students Jacob Coutie, Jordie Agnew and Hannah Tate.

Donning Catherine Bagnall’s costumes for the ‘Becoming Penguin’ walk are fourth year fashion students Jacob Coutie, Jordie Agnew and Hannah Tate.

Using theatre to turn people into penguins is a symbolic way to highlight some of the planet’s most vulnerable species in this year’s global Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action events in Wellington.

Co-organiser Massey University’s Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley says a number of Massey staff and students will become “human penguins” on stage and in the streets of Wellington this Labour Weekend. They are showcasing how artists and performers can respond to environmental and social issues – in this case, the serious threat of global warming to the existence of Antarctica’s penguin populations.

Her new play, The Penguins, is being performed in 14 locations worldwide from Paris to Shanghai and the United States, as well as at Massey’s Wellington campus on Labour Day (October 23). It is one of nine short plays on climate change featured at this year’s Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action event at Massey – part of a six-week global movement to highlight climate change issues through performance.

In a thematic prelude, participants will take to the streets of central Wellington in the “Becoming Penguin” performance walk, starting at the Cenotaph at Parliament at 1pm and heading to Massey University. Participants (everyone welcome) are invited to join the walk wearing whatever black and white items they have in their wardrobe that lend a penguin “look”.

Creator of “Becoming Penguin”, Massey lecturer in the School of Design | Ngā Pae Māhutonga, Catherine Bagnall, is an artist whose work focuses on the edges of fashion studies and its intersection with performance practices.

“In the context of questions about humanity’s relationship to the planetary ecosystem and how we categorise ‘other’ species, ‘Becoming Penguin’ explores ideas about the end of the Anthropocene and the beginning of the post-human world,” Ms Bagnall says.

The walk, she says, is to “symbolise support for all the communities taking personal responsibility for climate action at a local level, when governments won’t.”

World premieres staged

Following the “Becoming Penguin” walk, a cast of 23 – including well-known Wellington professional actors alongside Massey students and staff – will stage nine climate action plays by writers of Jamaican, Portuguese, Native American, Australian, New Zealand, Samoan, Canadian and US descent at the campus Theatre Laboratory from 2pm.

“The programme includes two world premieres – a short play by Samoan writer/director Ian Lesā about Pacific Island climate change issues, and one by Kat Laveaux, a playwright from the Lakota tribe in the United States, who visited Massey University earlier this year as part of the National Expedition and Internship Programme, and became keen to participate in Climate Change Theatre Action,” says Dr Tilley.

Also featuring is work by another School of English and Media Studies playwright, Philip Braithwaite, whose short play “Swing Among the Stars”, about colonising Mars, is scheduled for nine Climate Change Theatre Action performances globally.

In her play, Dr Tilley explores human behaviour and attitudes from another species’ perspective (one in which the males ‘stay home’ and look after the young) to provide an innovative and often hilarious framework into which serious ideas can be woven.

“It’s also a way of giving people hope. Penguins have been around for 60 million years, whereas humans have been on the planet for about two million years,” she says. “I think it’s important not to hit people in the face with a message.”

Art and creativity on social issues

Dr Tilley, a lecturer in theatre studies in the School of English and Media Studies – including the Creativity in the Community paper (in which students apply skills in theatre, performance, film-making, creative writing, media practice or mixed media to developing a creative response to a social issue or community need) – is the author of several award-winning plays on climate change and social issues, and producer of the biennial Aotearoa Climate Change Theatre Action events, launched in 2015.

She says the process of creating and performing theatre about a difficult and daunting topic can be empowering for participants and audiences.

“People get bombarded with information about climate change and the doom-filled scenarios – the result is that people become complacent and switch off,” she says. “The performances in Still Waving will entertain, console and confront you with works that are humorous and intense, problem-illuminating and solution-focused, powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes catastrophic, often moving and inspirational.”

All proceeds from the Still Waving event go to youth-led climate action group Generation Zero, which is campaigning for a zero carbon New Zealand economy.

For more information, check out the Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Facebook page.

Source: Penguins on stage and street in climate change action – Massey University

Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action

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CCTA Aotearoa's Nine Playwrights

CCTA Aotearoa’s Nine Playwrights

With only a few days to go until Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2017, we are excited to bring you the full programme.

On October 23, we will be staging nine short plays at 2pm in the Massey University Wellington Theatre Laboratory:

  • Start Where You Are, by E. M. Lewis – a poignant look at how to remain hopeful in the face of calamity, by an award-winning Oregon-based playwright
  • The Penguins, by Elspeth Tilley – lifting our spirits through comedy as we find out what penguins think of humanity
  • Truth Like Water, by Kat Laveaux – premiering a compassionate view of the world from an emerging Native American playwright whose tribe stands in defiance at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests
  • A Girl’s Dance, by Ian Lesā – also a world premiere: a powerfully spiritual work from a new voice, Samoan New Zealand playwright and director Ian Lesā
  • Brackendale, by Elaine Ávila – a wry comedy about Bald Eagles and rubbish dumps, from a Canadian/US writer of Azorean Portuguese descent
  • Single Use, by Marcia Johnson – a Jamaican playwright’s very modern sketch of online dating in the 21st century and how we decide what’s important in a partner
  • Swing Among the Stars, by Philip Braithwaite – an interstellar future, from the imagination of a multi-award-winning New Zealand playwright
  • Homo Sapiens, by Chantal Bilodeau – a trip to the zoo, a century from now. What will be on exhibit? A provocative comedy from the co-founder of Climate Change Theatre Action, and;
  • Rube Goldberg Device for The Generation of Hope, by Jordan Hall – an interactive experience that will get you off your feet, from a fresh and inspirational Canadian playwright.

There will also be readings of the three winning pieces in our Climate Change Theatre Action Creative Writing Competition, and a short talk from Generation Zero about what you can do to pitch in in the fight against climate change.

Still Waving is a paperless event, so please download our full programme in a PDF file, here for more detail of cast and crew: Still Waving Final Programme PDF 3

If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now from EventFinda: https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2017/still-waving-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa-2017/wellington

And don’t forget, you can also join the ‘Becoming Penguin’ Performance Walk just prior to Still Waving if you’re keen – details at http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/2017/08/30/becoming-penguin-a-performance-walk/

 

Massey grad takes flight with first novel – Massey University

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Her e-books for teens have already attracted over one million readers. She has huge international and local fan-bases. Now Massey University graduate Jessica Pawley has just signed off international screen adaptation rights for her just-published science fiction novel Air Born.

Pawley (published as J L Pawley) recently launched her first book – about teens who suddenly grow wings and learn to fly – in Auckland after it was picked up by respected and award-winning New Zealand publisher Steam Press (an imprint of the Eunoia Publishing Group). The Russian and Chinese translation rights have already also been sold – huge markets for the young writer who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English and Media Studies in 2010, and a Master of Arts in 2017.

Air Born is the first novel of her young adult sci-fi series Generation Icarus, an earlier version of which was self-published through the e-book streaming app Wattpad. Through this site, she cultivated a strong relationship with her fan base – including input and feedback from readers that contributed to the evolution of the series – which saw the creation of fan art, fan fiction, and social media accounts.

The story centres on 17-year-old Tyler Owen, who starts having back pain but doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Then, on his first solo skydive, his wings emerge. Wings that will simultaneously save and destroy his life. Caught on camera, Tyler is an instant viral hit, attracting unwanted attention of the worst kind.

Forced to go on the run, he’s pursued by the sinister Evolutionary Corporation and a dubious religious cult known as the Angelists. But the widespread media coverage also brings forward others like him from around the world. Together they form the Flight – finding out the hard way what it means to be the first of a new species.

An avid reader since childhood – soaking up everything from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Terry Pratchett’s bestselling fantasy novels – Pawley’s long-held dream has been to write full-time.

Crediting her first taste of success with being driven, determined, disciplined, and loving what she does, Pawley first completed a Diploma of Creative Writing by distance while still a Year 13 student at Westlake Girls’ High School, and proceeded to a BA at Massey, enrolling in every creative writing paper available.

Her motivation to study literature whilst working on her own writing stemmed from her knowledge and awareness of how competitive the publishing industry is, especially a few years ago when many bookstores and publishers were closing as the popularity of e-books, e-readers and online sales soared.

“I was aware of how difficult it is to get published, and I knew I had to work hard to improve my craft and therefore my chances,” she says.

Tuning in to teens’ reading tastes

In 2016, she added to her industry knowledge by researching online interactive e-book platforms (how these online social reading communities are evolving new processes of fiction production and consumption) for her master’s (for which she achieved First Class Honours).

Engaging with teen readers – face-to-face through teaching as well as online – has given her precious insights and guidance in her writing. During a year of teacher aiding at a Hibiscus Coast high school with a class of reluctant readers, she developed a good rapport by finding stories they liked (Harry Potter, the Twilight series), and discussing themes that most appeal to them. Paranormal abilities intertwined with still-relatable stories came out tops, and she proceeded to write the first draft of First Flight (now fully redeveloped and published as Air Born), which went on to be chosen as a featured book on Wattpad in 2014, and won a Bronze Award from Readers Favorite [sic] in 2015.

She even researched the physics and biology of animal flight to create a believable sense of being a winged creature. There is gore and gristle in the sprouting of wings, as well as the thrill of flight. “It’s gritty, painful, and bloody – there’s no magic,” she warns.

And while the plot, setting and characters are deliberately international, she’s woven in New Zealand elements, including a Māori main character, Tui.

Currently immersed in meetings with film producers and busy working to tight deadlines on the television project development as well as honing her next book in the series, she says; “It’s still very surreal.” And real: “I’ve got so much work to do!”

There are book fairs and author interviews in Taiwan and Russia looming. All up, this new writer is flying.

Read more on: https://www.generationicarus.com/

Source: Massey grad takes flight with first novel – Massey University

Becoming Penguin, a Performance Walk.

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King Penguin Couple. Photo credit David Stanley (Creative Commons 2.0)

King Penguin Couple. Photo: David Stanley (Creative Commons 2.0)

In your white shirts and black tails, in your navy-blue dresses or in wetsuits and flippers or anything ‘penguin’ from your wardrobe please come and join us on a waddle, a ‘becoming penguin’ performance walk. If you have nothing penguin in your wardrobe, come with a penguin state of mind and we will supply you with some penguin apparel.

As part of Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa, performance artist Catherine Bagnall will lead the walk from Parliament grounds up to Massey University Wellington, where the climate change play ‘The Penguins’ will be performed, along with other climate action plays from Aotearoa and the world. Walking from Parliament into the community symbolises the theme of Climate Change Theatre Action 2017 – that there are steps communities can take to act together and make a positive difference, even when governments won’t. And that every step, however small, is important.
It’s free to join the Becoming Penguin performance walk: if you then want to stay for the theatre action show, tickets to see the plays are available by small koha to Generation Zero and can be purchased from https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2017/still-waving-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa-2017/wellington
To join ‘Becoming Penguin’, meet at the Cenotaph next to Parliament Grounds at 1pm on Monday October 23.
Catherine Bagnall is an artist whose work focuses on the edges of fashion studies and its intersection with performance practices. Testing the bounds of self through performative acts of ‘dressing up’, her research offers new modes of experience that use performance to explore the possibility of becoming ‘other’, a different species for example. In the context of questions about humanity’s relationship to the planetary ecosystem and how we categorise ‘other’ species, ‘Becoming Penguin’ explores ideas about the end of the Anthropocene and the beginning of the post-human world.
See more about Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2017 at https://www.facebook.com/events/163701054197372/
Still Waving is part of the worldwide series of CCTA readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially in support of the United Nations Conference of the Parties. CCTA is organised globally by the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, NoPassport Theatre Alliance, The Arctic Cycle and Theatre Without Borders. CCTA Aotearoa is brought to you by Massey University School of English & Media Studies, in partnership with Massey University Ngā Pae Māhutonga – the School of Design, Generation Zero, and Pukeahu ki Tua: Think Differently Wellington.

Still Waving: New Voices Climate Action Creative Writing Competition

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Write, inspire and win! As part of our Climate Change Theatre Action 2017 event, ‘Still Waving,’ the Massey University School of English & Media Studies and Pukeahu ki Tua: Think Differently Wellington are proud to announce a climate action creative writing competition for new and emerging writers.

Prizes:

1st place – $300

2nd place – $200

3rd place – $100

 

Thematic guidelines

The creative writing competition aligns with Climate Change Theatre Action’s global theme, which is that “climate action requires a hopeful vision of the future”.

CCTA 2017 asks the question: “How can we turn the challenges of climate change into opportunities?”

We are looking for creative writing that provides hope, inspires positive action, and illuminates individual and collective solutions.  There is still time to change the course of climate change: it is not too late, but it will require a collective will the likes of which planet earth has seldom seen. How can you use your writing, your particular voice, to help people visualise, embrace and achieve that change? What specific images can we find to illuminate why people should care about the environment? How can we move people without preaching to them or becoming didactic?

Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences. . . (Rebecca Solnit)

Genre:

We are accepting five types of entry:

  • Twitterature (tell a story in no more than 140 characters)
  • Flash Fiction 100 Words (tell a story in exactly 100 words – no more and no less)
  • Poetry (any length up to 200 words)
  • Short stories of up to 1200 words.
  • Personal essays of up to 1200 words.

To enter:

Please email your entry in the body of an email to climateactionwriting@gmail.com by 5pm (NZ time) on Friday October 6, 2017.

Entry is open to all new and emerging writers. We take this to mean anyone who has not published a book.  By entering you agree to publication of your entry and your name in social media. You may enter as many different items as you like.  Please include your full name and the city or town you live in, with your entry.

The judge:

We are grateful to Dr Ingrid Horrocks from the School of English & Media Studies for agreeing to judge the Still Waving Climate Writing competition.  Ingrid’s creative publications include two collections of poetry, a number of personal essays, and a genre-bending travel book.

More about Still Waving:

Still Waving, our 2017 Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa event, will take place on October 23 at Massey Wellington campus. There will be plays, readings, a performance art installation, and of course the prize-giving announcement of the fabulous winners of this competition!  Still Waving is part of the global Climate Change Theatre Action 2017, which involves 50 selected plays (including two from our school) and more than 180 events in 41 countries. This is the second time we have participated in CCTA and we are delighted to be back! Check it all out at: https://www.facebook.com/events/163701054197372/

Theatre workshop “outside the box” for prisoners

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A two-day workshop with an internationally renowned exponent of theatre that promotes social change has given a group of prisoners at Auckland Prison at Paremoremo a unique forum to share their stories.

The men performed short plays to a select audience, exploring solutions to the challenges they face in prison, from personal safety to mental health.

Ten prisoners took part in the project last week in a partnership between Auckland Prison and Massey University, and led by guest theatre practitioner David Diamond, founder and artistic director of the Vancouver-based Theatre for Living. His approach uses theatrical techniques as a vehicle for individuals and groups to explore controversial or sensitive issues. These are shaped into plays and presented to audiences in an interactive event that encourages new insights and understanding.

The workshop participants addressed issues such as gossip, intimidation and safety with fellow prisoners and staff, privacy and respect between prisoners and Corrections Officers, and isolation and mental health challenges. Under the directorship of Diamond – who is currently in New Zealand as a guest of Massey University to host workshops and as a keynote conference speaker – the men produced three short plays and performed these to 40 invited guests, including prison staff.

Dr Rand Hazou, who lectures in theatre studies at Massey’s Auckland campus in Albany and who spearheaded the partnership with the prison and Diamond’s visit, says the prisoners were “very committed to the process, responsive to the theatre exercises, and were very generous in sharing aspects of their experience with a lot of integrity”.

Mr Diamond says Theatre for Living is about people being the experts in their own lives and being able to use theatre to make change. In workshops, participants get the chance “to experience theatre in a different way – not as something mysterious and inaccessible that is outside their lives, but as a natural language”.

Theatre to rehearse behavioural change

He says the theatre is “a great place to rehearse behavioural change” due to the symbolic nature of its power.

During the workshops, he helped the prisoners to develop “a language of theatre” through group building games, as well as Image Theatre techniques, where participants are asked to create frozen images (tableaux) using their bodies. Through a deeper exploration of what their images represented and the crises they expressed, he worked with them to produce three short plays.

“The men were very flexible and took direction, some of them like seasoned professional actors. This comes, in part, from knowing the material of the plays so deeply,” Diamond says.

He was struck by the power of the plays the men made, rehearsed and performed in a short period of time. “My hope is that the recommendations that came from the Forum [plays] will create at least some movement in the prison.”

One prisoner who took part said: “Participating in the workshop has been so different. Things like these keep my brain alive.”

“Doing the theatre was very ‘outside the box’ for the prison,” says Diamond, “so a big thank you to Rand Hazou who pushed and also the people at the prison who risked accepting the project – and of course the men who engaged so deeply.”

Life changing experience

Diamond was also “very moved” by the haka performed in his honour by the prisoners. “Leaving was difficult after our time together. Their words about carrying this experience with them for the rest of their lives, and my knowledge that I will do the same, remain.”

Dr Hazou says the aims of the workshop were to:

  • Support the on-going engagement in theatre and creativity at Auckland Prison.
  • Provide a creative opportunity for prisoners to learn from a leading international theatre practitioner and cultivate their performance skills.
  • Use theatre to highlight particular issues relevant to the prison community.

Andy Langley, Prison Director of Auckland Prison, said: “Auckland Prison has been honoured to have someone of the stature of David Diamond giving his time to work with a group of prisoners in a thought-provoking way. This kind of creative collaboration contributes to Corrections’ rehabilitative programmes for prisoners to reduce re-offending, and supports prisoners to address their offending behaviour and other challenges they face.”

David Diamond is a keynote at the 2017 Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA) Conference: ‘Performing Belonging in the 21st Century’ this week.