In a significant moment for Australian arts, Geelong’s Back to Back Theatre has just been announced as the 2024 recipient of the Venice Biennale Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement in theatre.
One of the most prestigious cultural festivals in the world, the Venice Biennale each year awards its highest prize, the Golden Lion in film, theatre, dance and music.
From left to right, Scott Price, Simon Laherty, Bruce Gladwin and Sarah Mainwaring of Back to Back Theatre have been awarded the top gong by the Venice Biennale.Credit: Simon Schluter
Established in 1987, Back to Back Theatre is driven by Sarah Mainwaring, Simon Laherty and Scott Price, an ensemble of actors who identify as having an intellectual disability or as neurodivergent, together with artistic director Bruce Gladwin. This week, ensemble member Mark Deans retires after 34 years with the organisation.
The theatre group is a pioneer of powerful, often confronting work, much of which they have toured around the world to great acclaim.
The award means a lot to the ensemble who said they were honoured, humbled and thrilled to receive it.
“It’s an honour to have received this award and it means that we are able to make more work – and that is exciting,” said Mainwaring, who has been with the group since 2006.
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich by Geelong-based arts company Back to Back Theatre. Credit:
Price concurs, saying it’s an honour and it’s good to be recognised. “The fact that I even have a job, as a person with a disability, I’m lucky to have a job. Twenty years ago I would not have had this opportunity, which is sad.”
Gladwin said the award “validates the creative decisions we have made”.
“In a way it acknowledges the hours and the hard work [the ensemble] put into performing. It’s lovely.”
The not-for-profit company, which in 2022 was awarded the International Ibsen Award, is known for works such as Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, Small Metal Objects, The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes and Food Court, which they have been invited to take to Venice in June.
The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes.Credit: Jeff Busby
Last year’s Golden Lion recipients include Armando Punzo for theatre, Brian Eno for music and the feature film Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone.
Announcing the award, the directors of the Venice Biennale’s theatre department Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte said: “Back to Back Theatre present a visionary parable of communication that with poetic ferocity disintegrates every prejudice, every stigma of compassion: if the body has expressive limitations, on stage these demarcations themselves become a different grammar.
“Our fears, our puritan tolerance, our moral blindness are blown away by Back to Back Theatre’s cruel tales of dangerous worlds, where diversity carries with it the amplification of knowledge, of inclusion, to heal the deformities of our awareness as apparently abled people. … Because no matter what limitation a person may feel, it is up to us as the human consortium to remove it; this is what culture does, this is theatre to be deserved, this and much more is Back to Back Theatre.”
From 2009 to 2023, the company undertook 86 national and 124 international seasons of its work including at the Edinburgh International Festival, London’s V&A Museum and the Barbican, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival and Theater der Welt, Festival Tokyo and the Kennedy Centre in Washington.
The Biennale described Back to Back Theatre as “the pioneer of renewal in Australian theatre and one of the companies known around the world for making disability a tool of artistic enquiry”.
“Back to Back Theatre has captivated audiences around the world for the past 30 years with works that address social, political, and philosophical themes, challenging the construction of our imaginations and our perception of normalcy,” it said.
Multiple Bad Things, a new work, will be staged at the Geelong Performing Arts Centre in April, Brussels in May and Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre mid-year.
“Our objective is to make great art, that is what we are striving to do. Anything like advocacy is a by-product,” said Gladwin.
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