THE AUSTRALASIAN CHINESE THEATRE COMPANY (Est. 2007)
I had a dream… that one day Australia will have intrinsically Australasian Chinese inter-cultural musicals, plays, films & other shows.
I am concerned that so few Australasian Chinese are performing artists and when they are, there is little opportunity for them to show case their talents. I created the Australasian Chinese Theatre/Film company based on that belief. The ACT’s mission is to raise the curtain for emerging Australasian Chinese performing artists (old & young) and their works. The ACT will play the role of an incubator and grow emerging talents.
The ACT’s inaugural production was From Little Things… in 2008. The ACT commissioned Aurora Kurth, a theatremaker/actor/singer to write, design and devise an inter-cultural show derived from my brief. The two criteria for the show were that it had to have at least an Australian Chinese performer and it must be intrinsically inter-cultural drawing elements from Chinese and white-Anglo Australian culture. From Little Things… was an intrinsically inter-cultural piece, and received good reviews in The Age and the Herald Sun.
In 2010, the ACT produced Blues in the Night: a Cabaret inspired by Eva Cassidy. It was very well received. It was Tegan Jones’ debut as a solo singer in a cabaret style setting in the ACT’s recently opened studio in Brighton, Victoria, Australia. Tegan made her second appearance at the ACT studio with Lady Be Good inspired by the First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald.
My dear little play, Our Man in Beijing, has undergone many versions since I first conceived the notion of writing it as an educational tool for teaching Chinese in Australia. I figured that my students at the Australasian Centre of Chinese Studies, which I founded in 1994 would have enjoyed their conversation sessions much more if they were reading a play. And I was right. They did. So much so that they performed the play to a packed audience in 2001, crammed into a church hall.
Eleven years later, a revised and longer version, was performed in the Australasian Chinese Theatre’s venue in Brighton and over 200 people came to see it. In 2012 Our Man in Beijing was performed at La Mama, the icon of independent theatre in Melbourne, beloved by many theatre goers. And now in 2013, we take this play over the seas to Malaysia to share this cross-cultural story with them.
Dr. Moni Storz
Founder & Artistic Director
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While the ACT’s mission is to produce quality inter-cultural works of theatre, the ACT chooses to support the following charities.
The ACT supports the Aloha Foundation who runs orphanages in East Timor and raise funds to buy food for starving children globally as well as the work the Mirabel Foundation does by assisting children who have been orphaned or abandoned due to parental illicit drug use and are now in the care of extended family (kinship care).
If you would like to support and make a donation, please click below.
