PhD, Performance Studies - Victoria University (2016), Master's degree in Animateuring/cross-modal performance - Victorian College of the Arts (2001), B.Ed in Drama, Dance & Design - Victoria College, Rusden (1986-1989), Graduate of The John Bolton Theatre School (1991)
Tamara Saulwick is a performance-maker, director and dramaturge from Melbourne, Australia. She makes contemporary performance pieces for theatres and public spaces. Since 2017 she has had the role of Artistic Director of Melbourne arts company Chamber Made, who are creators of original works at the meeting point of sound, music and performance.[1]
Early career
Saulwick has a number of film and television acting credits including Nirvana Street Murder (1990) and TV show The Games in 1998.
Saulwick was a founding member of outdoor performance companies, The Hunting Party and Strange Fruit, with which she toured in Europe and Central America through the early 1990s.[2] She worked as a core artist with Neil Cameron Productions from 1993 to 1999, assisting in the direction of large-scale outdoor community performance events.[3][4] In 2016 Saulwick completed her doctorate on dramaturgies of sound in live performance at Victoria University.[5]
In 1997 and 1999 Saulwick worked in Vienna with Austrian actor Justus Neumann on two productions, Don Quixote and Die Bibel im Lusthaus Zu Wein.[6]
From 1998 to 2008 Saulwick worked as an actor and collaborator with Not Yet It's Difficult, an interdisciplinary arts company led by David Pledger.[7]
Saulwick was a member of the Melbourne Playback Theatre Company from 2005 to 2011.[8] She took part regularly in performances integrating improvisation and storytelling.[9]
Early pieces that influenced Saulwick's future direction include 2005's Imprint[10] and 2001's Map Folding for Beginners.[11]
Career
Saulwick's creative practice explores themes of communication, exploring how people connect with each other through confrontation and negotiation. Her work incorporates technological elements including mobile, digital and analogue.[4][12]
Pin Drop won multi Green Room Awards. This solo work was first shown at Arts House in 2010[13] and explored sensations to do with fear and a woman's sense of threat from a stranger in a variety of contexts.[14] In 2011 this piece played at the Malthouse Theatre.[15] It then toured Australia in 2012 with Mobile States[16] In 2013 Pin Drop was adapted for ABC Radio National With Peter Knight.[17] Featuring in a schedule of Australian contemporary performance and dance, there was a presentation of this piece in 2014 at acclaimed arts venue Tramway, Glasgow, UK.[18]
In 2013 Saulwick created PUBLIC. This was an audio performance piece created for the Big West Festival in Maribyrnong, Victoria. It explored clashes between public and private behaviour in a busy food court section of a shopping centre.[19]
In 2015 Saulwick created a piece called Endings, which incorporated portable record players, reel-to-reel recorders and live performers, Saulwick, folk singer Paddy Mann (AKA Grand Salvo) and Peter Knight.[20] It was created to explore the ways people engage with death.[21] Co-funded by Melbourne's Arts House and Performance Space in Eveleigh, Sydney, it was premiered at Sydney Festival in 2015,[22] following this there was a season at Melbourne's Arts House.[23]
In 2016 Saulwick directed Permission to Speak for Chamber Made Opera with composer Kate Neal.[24] The piece explores the relationship between parents and their children as it evolves through a lifetime and features contemporary performance, musical composition for voices, with layered edits from interviews. Permission to Speak won the 2017 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Award for Victorian Performance of the Year[25] and was nominated for Choral/Vocal Work of The Year.[26] Saulwick and Neal were interviewed about this piece on the New Waves Podcast[27] and its production was featured in a Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) documentary broadcast on 14 October 2016.[28]
In 2016 Saulwick was commissioned to create Newport Archives by The Substation, an arts centre situated in Newport, Victoria in a converted industrial building. This 40 minute experience is a permanent piece in which participants listen to a guided walk using an mp3 player.[29]
In February 2017 Saulwick became Artistic Director at Chamber Made Opera.[30]
In 2017 Endings was performed in Canada, Great Britain (at the Brighton Festival[31]) and Ireland (at the Dublin Theatre Festival[32][33]), and played again in Canada at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, January 2018[34] and America in February 2018 at On The Boards in Seattle.[35]Endings won multiple award nominations (for a Helpmann Award for 'Best New Australian Work'[36] and a Green Room Award for best 'Contemporary & Experimental Performance'[37]) and received a Green Room Award for 'Design and Realisation'.[38] In 2016 Saulwick and her collaborator, the composer Peter Knight adapted Endings for ABC Radio National's Soundproof.[39]
Another significant work is Alter, which is a performance using a constructed sound and light installation featuring 16 iPads (each participant used an iPad during the performance).[40] The piece was commissioned for the Festival of Live Art by Arts House.[41] Saulwick used a residency at Blast Theory, Portslade, Brighton and Hove, UK in September 2015 to develop this work.[42] There was an element of the brief encouraging artists to make work with a low environmental impact.[43] This piece will be touring in China for one month in 2018.[44]
Projects with Peter Knight
Saulwick also works extensively with her partner, Peter Knight,[45] who is an internationally renowned composer, musician and artistic director of Australian Art Orchestra.[46] Together they have made a number of works: Pin Drop, which won a Green Room Award in 2010 for Outstanding Production in Alternative and Hybrid Performance and was nominated for Best Composition and Sound Design.[47] The pair was also commissioned by the ABC to turn this project into a radiophonic work[48]
Pin Drop toured Australia and also played in Glasgow at Tramway.[49]
In December 2014 a transcript of a conversation on the topic of performance and technology between Suzanne Kersten, David Pledger, Julian Rickert, Tamara Saulwick, Hellen Sky, Gorkem Acaroglu and Glennat D’Cruz at the Mechanics Institute, Brunswick, on Saturday 3 November 2013 entitled Working with technology/making technology work: A round table discussion was published in Australasian Drama Studies, Issue 65[55]
2014 also saw the publishing of Pin Drop: A live work for solo performer and 11 voices, her contribution to a collection of essays called ‘Testimony, Witness, Authority: The politics and poetics of experience.'[56]
Academic achievements
Saulwick has a PhD in performance studies from Victoria University (2016), a master's degree in Animateuring/cross-modal performance from the Victorian College of the Arts (2001), a B.Ed. in drama, dance & design from Victoria College, Rusden (1986-1989) and is a graduate of The John Bolton Theatre School (1991).[3][57]
Nominations and awards
Victorian Green Room Awards
2016: Best Sound Performance nomination – Permission to Speak (Chamber Made Opera)[58]
2015: Design and Realisation Award- Endings
2015: Best Contemporary Performance nomination – Endings[59]
2013: Outstanding Hybrid Work nomination – PUBLIC[60]
