Margaret Davis – Theatre Director
Please Note: Due to illness this event will be postponed until next year. Sign up using the form below to stay updated. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Youth Cafe with Margaret Davis
6pm Wednesday 21st August
101 Wentworth St Blackheath
An event for young people aged 16 – 30
Join us for a night of conversation with Margaret Davis over a bring-a-plate dinner.
Margaret is highly regarded as a Director, Playwright and Educator. Find out what it’s like to have a career in dance and theatre and learn more about how to devise a theatre piece and pitch ideas.
More about Margaret:
Margaret began her professional life as a dancer with Opera Australia in 1972 and since then she has developed a multi-faceted career as actor, director, writer and lecturer in the performing arts.
She was the first woman appointed as a director with a mainstage theatre company (1981 Assistant Director of the State Theatre Company of SA) and also built the Riverina Theatre Company to a professional touring status in the mid-80s.
She has directed over fifty productions for leading theatres around Australia (including Griffin, Belvoir and Malthouse) and with her own company, Two Planks and a Passion. Her particular interest in physical theatre is reflected in her original works Isis Dreaming and Spilling Bodies and the gothic horror novel adaptation, The Monk. Other produced works as a playwright include Mad Before Midday and The Woman on the Twenty Dollar Note, for which she received an AWGIE nomination for best play for young audiences.
In May 2017, with assistance of a grant from the Blue Mountains City of the Arts Cultural Trust, Margaret created and directed a production of a new work about food and memory, Breaking Bread, which featured a team of 16 writers and actors from the Blue Mountains area and had a sell-out season.
Margaret has recently staged a new work, Eating Pomegranates, with a successful season at Wentworth Falls School of Arts in March, 2019. This production used the same model as Breaking Bread, with food served as part of the event. The work, which celebrates bodies through all stages of life and death, was developed through a QLab residency at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre and the support of the Blue Mountains Cultural Trust.
In 2018 and 2019, Margaret has been a resident artist with the Annual Youth Theatre Festival at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, devising and directing physical theatre pieces with Year 11 students from Blue Mountains Grammar School.
Also in 2019 she has been Guest Director on the Originate project at the Joan, working with a group of emerging theatre artists and an astronomer from Western Sydney University to produce Push Me Away Pull Me Closer as a response to ideas about black holes and gravitational forces both in space and in human relationships.
In October 2019 sections of Eating Pomegranates will be reprised as part of the Beyond the Brink festival in the Blue Mountains.
Margaret lectured in Contextual Studies for the BA in Performing Arts at AIM for ten years and also freelances as a dramaturge and script assessor.
Margaret is a member of the BMCAN Cultural Leaders Awards Committee and a regular presenter on Theatre on Radio Blue Mountains ARTHouse program.
To stay updated with our regularly changing program, sign up for our email newsletter below:
[ninja_form id=2]
