Biennale Golden Lion for disability theatre group Back to Back

Geelong’s Back to Back theatre has received the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, making it the third Australian participant in the ‘art Olympics’ this year to take out a top honour.

Back to Back Theatre receives the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. Picture: Andrea Avezzù, Venice Biennale

Back to Back Theatre Company’s set designs may have been seized by customs in Italy, but nothing could keep the Geelong troupe from taking centre stage in Venice as it accepted the Biennale’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.

Representatives of the pioneering independent theatre company, whose cast is drawn from the disabled community, were in the canal city on Sunday to receive the prestigious honour.

The win is the third major award taken out this year by an Australian participant at the Biennale, the international eight-month exhibition often referred to as the “Olympics of art”. Brisbane artist Archie Moore in May won the Biennale’s highest honour, the Golden Lion for best international participation for his work kith and kin at the Giardini’s Australia pavilion, while Australian filmmaker Peter Weir also was awarded a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.

Back to Back’s award was presented by Biennale artistic director Adriano Pedrosa at the event’s historic headquarters Ca’ Giustinian overlooking the Grand Canal. Biennale teatro (theatre) artistic directors Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte addressed an audience of 200 invited guests, including officials from the Australian embassy in Rome. The pair praised the regional theatre troupe for its work over more than three decades “challenging perceptions of societal normalcy”.

Sarah Goninon in Food Court by Back to Back.

“Our fears, our puritan tolerance, our moral blindness are blown away by Back to Back Theatre’s tales of dangerous worlds, where diversity carries with it the amplification of knowledge, of inclusion. This is theatre deserving (of the Golden Lion).”

Back to Back artistic director Bruce Gladwin said the win was welcome recognition for the company’s hard work during the past three decades.

“It’s a great acknowledgment of the actors’ commitment and professionalism over decades of touring,” he said of the cast and crew who spent up to 20 weeks a year touring internationally and domestically. “They work tremendously hard.”

The Venice ceremony took place a day after the company completed its sold-out two-show run of its acclaimed 2008 work Food Court at the Biennale’s Arsenale Teatro precinct. The show was staged without its usual luminous sets after a freighting issue saw the production’s large-scale designs quarantined in Milan.

“It was a bit of a nightmare,” said Gladwin. “But we just rolled with it, and pushed ahead with the a plan B. That’s what we do.”

Food Court, a confronting and moving piece about a bullying and personal humiliation set “between the Asian Hut and The Juice Bar” of a titular eating area, stars and was conceived by Back to Back performers Sarah Goninon, Simon Laherty, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price and Tamika Simpson. It also features legendary Australian improvisational jazz trio The Necks who create a new live score for each performance.

Sarah Goninon, Simon Laherty and Sarah Mainwaring in Food Court, by Back to Back theatre

Queues to the show at the Arsenale’s Teatro Piccolo — one of the Biennale’s biggest venues — at the weekend snaked around the block.

Price said he hoped the award would help change “ableist perceptions” of theatre, and looked forward to returning to his home in Victoria. “I think this will change some things,” he said. “I hope you’re proud, Australia. We’re coming back home with the Golden Lion.”

Founded in 1987, Back to Back has been a staple of the Australian arts scene and an international touring machine. It shot to global prominence in 2011 with its multi-award winning show Ganesh vs The Third Reich, a show about the Hindu deity seeking to reclaim the Swastika from the Nazis. The New York Times praised that show as “a vital sense-sharpening tonic for theatregoers who feel they’ve seen it all”.

The company is no stranger to global recognition, having won Norway’s $370,000 Ibsen award for theatre in 2022 and the Edinburgh International Arts Festival’s Herald Angel critics award in 2014.

Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke said Back to Back — itself a registered National Disability Insurance Scheme provider — was deserving of the recognition.

“They’re one of our most successful exports. Back to Back draws into question some assumptions people often would have about what’s possible in the theatre,” he said.

“Disability access in the arts doesn’t simply mean access to seats in the audience. It also means access to the stage.”