Interview with Yoni Prior single work   interview  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Interview with Yoni Prior
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Described by Robert Reid as 'one of the most unforgettable actors we've seen',1 Yoni Prior has been a performance-maker and champion of the Australian independent theatre scene for over thirty years. After Gilgul disbanded, Yoni took up the helm as Head of the Drama Department at Deakin University (then Rusden State College), working as an actor trainer, director, researcher, and creating a number of digital theatre collaborations between Deakin University, the University of Amsterdam, the British Museum and Cambridge University. Matt Delbridge, Head of Theatre at VCA and funnily also a student of Yoni's and a member of Gilgul, was kind enough to lend us his office to do this interview as it was too noisy in the staff room and too cold out in the park. [...]that was an amazing time where Lyndal Jones had just started as director of student theatre, and introduced experimental work, street theatre, political theatre to the existing mix of plays and musicals. [...]there was this amazing collision of dance and impulse-based training that kept returning me to my body, back to my impulses in spaces where thinking was just not going to cut it.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australasian Drama Studies no. 75 October 2019 18496337 2019 periodical issue

    'Papers, presentations and workshops ranged across many subjects, including: individual performers and practices; dramaturgies of acting, technology, disability and access; rehearsal and hierarchies of power; acting and ethics; women in the acting and performance industries; diversity on the stage; mainstream and independent work; comedy; physical practices; and wellbeing and mental health. Actresses have been particularly vocal about the need to challenge the gender pay gap, sexism, racism and male abuse of power, and there is a noticeable difference in the numbers of actresses of all ages who are prepared to speak out about the invisibility and marginalisation that too many have endured. The different moods of the actresses in these articles and interviews are also striking: the optimism and celebratory notes evident in Trevor Jones's piece on women performers of musical theatre and the joyously comic anarchy manifest in Sarah Peters' article on the Travelling Sisters are not, for example, sounded by Candy Bowers, who describes a landscape of white supremacy and 'the centring of whiteness' above all, and identifies a major problem with diversity and access to training as well as an unwillingness to celebrate intersectionality and diverse storytelling on Australian stages. Forsyth observes that many women turn to film and television not just because of financial issues and the limited roles that mature actresses are offered on the stage, but also because of the physical wear and tear on the body and mind.' (Mary Lockhurst, Editorial abstract)

    2019
    pg. 259-286
Last amended 7 Jan 2020 16:20:33
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