MEDIA RELEASE • 5 JUNE 2023
Geelong Arts Centre’s Creative Engine and Raspberry Ripple are proud to present three award-winning performers in Risky Business: A little show and a big conversation on Wednesday 28 June at 3:00pm & 6:30pm at Limelight Studio 4.
Directed by Kate Hood, Risky Business features facilitator Zoe Boesen, and three award-winning performers; Andy Jackson, Eliza Hull and Olivia Muscat. This is a unique show that explores the ongoing practice and future development of disability and its true representation in the arts, delivering surprising insights and fresh perspectives.
Risky Business was created by Kate Hood, Artistic Director of Raspberry Ripple Productions, a disability–led theatre company that is actively bridging the gap between Disability and Mainstream performing arts. Raspberry Ripple operates around the Social Model of disability, aiming to create theatre of a professional standard using disabled performers, writers, directors, designers and technical artists.
Part performance, part panel discussion, this one-of-a-kind event addresses the questions surrounding disability that society is often afraid to ask and puts the voices and experiences of Deaf and Disabled artists at the heart of the conversation, right where they should be.
In addition to participating in the discussion, each of the performers will showcase a performance piece. Andy Jackson will perform his poems Quasimodo and Unfinished. Eliza Hull will perform her song Running Underwater, as seen on ABC’s flagship show Q+A. Olivia Muscat will perform a monologue from People Places and Things, accompanied by local artist Libby Brockman.
Come sit in the dark, see the unseen, hear the unheard, and get excited about the future of true diversity and its representation in Australian performing arts.
To buy tickets, visit geelongartscentre.org.au/creative-engine/risky-business/
This project is supported by the City of Greater Geelong through its Creative Communities Grant Program. Geelong Arts Centre’s Creative Engine program is proudly supported by Major Artistic Partner, Deakin University, and Innovation Partner, Costa Asset Management.
To learn more about the Creative Engine program and current programs and opportunities, visit geelongartscentre.org.au/creative-engine
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QUOTES ATTRIBUTABLE
“There is a great reluctance in Australia to acknowledge that disability is simply part of the human condition, and that performers with disability can add dimension that has never been seen before.”
Quote attributable to Raspberry Ripple Artistic Director, Kate Hood
“At Geelong Arts Centre, we take pride in platforming diverse art forms of all abilities. Risky Business is an informative venture into the depths of disability and the unique perspectives it affords.”
Quote attributable to Geelong Arts Centre Head of Programming, Penny McCabe
ABOUT RASPBERRY RIPPLE
Raspberry Ripple is a Disability Led theatre company that operates around the Social Model of disability, aiming to create theatre of a professional standard using disabled performers, writers, directors, designers and technical artists. Raspberry Ripple challenges societal views of disability within the arts, creating a pathway into mainstream theatre for disabled performers.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
KATE HOOD
Kate Hood had a career as an able-bodied actor for many years, performing in everything from classics to musicals. She became a wheelchair user over a decade ago and reinvented herself as a disabled writer, advocate, and theatre maker. Kate’s theatre company Raspberry Ripple Productions dissolves the divide by making original, inclusive theatre using mainstream and disabled artists. She is the creative brains behind Risky Business, and its director.
ANDY JACKSON
Andy Jackson is a poet, creative writing teacher, and the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellow. He has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal, and his latest poetry collection is Human Looking, which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry.
ELIZA HULL
Eliza Hull is an award-winning musician, writer, and disability advocate. Her songs are featured in ABC KIDS TV show ‘And Then Something Changed,’ ABC ‘The Heights’ and American shows ‘Awkward, ‘Teen Wolf’ and ‘Saving Hope.’ Eliza is fresh from Austin, Texas where she spoke on a panel about accessibility in the music industry and performed at SXSW Festival with Sounds Australia. Eliza is a proud disabled person, with a physical condition ‘Charcot Marie Tooth.’
OLIVIA MUSCAT
Olivia Muscat is a writer, critic and performer whose work has featured in several anthologies and on various places around the internet including Kill Your Darlings, The Saturday Paper and Refinery-29. She has been featured at several writers’ festivals around Australia. She won an Arts Access Victoria Lesley Hall scholarship in 2020 and was runner up in the Kill Your Darlings new critic award in 2021. In 2022 she was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and a Varuna Writers’ Space Fellowship. She was also awarded residencies at Footscray Community Arts Centre and Arts House through Culture Lab to develop two performance showings in 2022.
ZOE BOESEN
Zoe Boesen is an acclaimed actor, director, disability advocate and facilitator of Risky Business. She brings her own unique perspective as Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Loom Arts and Management – a not-for-profit formed with the aim of increasing representation, respect and access for artists with disability within mainstream context.