Welcome to Season Two – bursting with ideas, provocations and urgent calls to action; with playful seductions, intimate explorations and an invitation to bring your questions to the gathering.

The performance companies, festivals and one-on-one experiences that make up Season Two all offer ways for you to complete their picture. Be part of the filmmaking of Back to Back’s Democratic Set or join in the forums at their re-presentation of morality-theatre text Hell House; contribute lyrics for Rose Ertler’s songwriting musicians as part of the Other Film Festival, or become a weather-maker in Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey’s Gauge. Witness the intimacies between Malcolm Whittaker and his girlfriend in Star******s and be spellbound by Zoe Scoglio’s new cosmology. Step literally inside the installation experiences of Jeff Stein’s Impasse and David Cross’s Hold – they’re designed for you and only you.

Many of our international artists come from our own region – in particular East Timor (Black Lung collaborators Galaxy and Liurai Fo’er) and New Zealand (David Cross). For Going Nowhere, a multi-focal event that celebrates international exchange without anyone getting on plane, our artist contributions come all the way from Europe, re-presented and responded to by some of Melbourne’s most adventurous performance makers.

Our Warehouse Salons take the shape of a forum and workshops led by UK writer Theron Schmidt – a chance to discuss and practise how we write about art and performance as it evolves before our very eyes.

Behind the scenes, our CultureLABs continue to give thrilling indications of what’s bubbling in our artists’ imaginations: writer/dramaturge Maryanne Lynch collaborates with Rawcus’s Kate Sulan; Rhian Hinkley and Chris Brown continue their development of Human; and choreographer/dancer Luke George investigates in his unique way what it means to be really ‘with’ the audience.

Thanks again to our Arts Advisory Panel for expert advice, to our new collaborators the Other Film Festival, our friends at Melbourne Festival, and the many other funders, producers, artists, families and friends that make the creation of all this work possible.

And thanks especially to you – for your curiosity, your capacity and your enthusiasm for taking risks.

Angharad Wynne-Jones
Creative Producer, Arts House