RAWCUS
Rawcus is an award-winning and critically acclaimed long-term ensemble of artists with diverse minds, bodies, and imaginations. Rawcus devises new work that expresses the imaginative world of the Ensemble. Drawing on dance, theatre and visual art disciplines, the work is crafted with a precision that supports the performers, but allows space for their inherent sense of anarchy. Rawcus’ performance aesthetic is characterised by a marriage of intense physicality, arresting visual imagery and devised text.
For 23 years, Rawcus’ work has featured as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Dance Massive, Next Wave, Melbourne Fringe and others. Rawcus is known for adventurous, unexpected and highly successful collaborations. We have collaborated with artists and companies including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Invenio Singers, and Restless Dance.
In addition to our work in the theatre, Rawcus has created photo exhibitions, community gatherings, short films, visual artworks, interactive public performance, and projection art. Rawcus has been nominated for and won numerous awards including a 2019 Helpmann Award Nomination for Best Production for Song for a Weary Throat. Most recently the company was nominated for 4 Green Room Awards for their latest work Interior, winning Outstanding Production.
AMELIA JEAN O'LEARY
Amelia Jean O'Leary (she/they/yinarr) is a proud First Nations Gamilaroi Yinarr artist from Northern New South Wales, currently living in Naarm (Melbourne). Her dance practice is about human and spiritual experiencing. Through complexity and adversity, she finds ways to tell coded and poetically rich stories. Her dances are personal and personified from her multidisciplinary skills in theatre, film and sound design. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2021, O’Leary performed and created multiple works including Yinarr (Adelaide Fringe and Dancehouse); A Certain Mumble (Darebin Arts Speakeasy) and STAUNCH ASF (Melbourne Fringe), for which she was awarded Best Emerging Indigenous Artist at Melbourne Fringe 2023, and nominated for a Green Room Award for Pioneering Artistry: Breaking Ground. Amelia also choreographed One Day as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s First Peoples Young Artists Program at Yirramboi Festival. O’Leary is the artist in residence at Abbotsford Convent and is currently developing multiple new works.
MICHAEL CARMODY
MICHAEL CARMODY (b.1979) is an Australian video artist and theatre maker based in Victoria. As a video designer for theatre he has worked with companies and organisations that include Melbourne Theatre Company, Black Swan State Theatre Company of WA, Sydney Theatre Company, Live Nation, Perth Festival, Melbourne Festival, St Martins, She Said, Sport for Jove, Blue Room, GPAC and Malthouse Theatre. His video work includes short documentaries, video art and installations that have screened nationally and internationally with festivals and organisations that include Melbourne International Film Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival, Perth Revelation International Film Festival, Traverse Video Festival France, White Night Melbourne, Geelong After Dark, La Trobe University Centre for Creative Arts, Knox City Council, and City of Darebin.