Robyn Archer

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Robyn Archer (b. 1948) AO CdOAL is an Australian singer, writer, stage and director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.

Contents

[edit] Life

Archer was born in Prospect then a working-class suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. She graduated from Adelaide University and was a high-school English teacher until 1974, when she took up a singing career. Archer has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours English) and Diploma of Education from Adelaide University.

[edit] Performance

In 1975 she played Jenny in Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. Since then her name has been linked particularly with the German cabaret songs of Weill, Eisler, and Paul Dessau. Her one-woman cabaret A Star is Torn (1979) covering various female singers including Billy Holliday and her 1981 show The Pack of Women both became successful books and recordings, the latter also being produced for television in 1986. In 1989 she was commissioned to write a new opera, Mambo, for the Nexus Opera, London. She was artistic director of the 1998 and 2000 Adelaide Festivals.[1]

Stage successes include her own shows,A Star is Torn and Tonight Lola Blau, but she is also known as a world foremost exponent of German cabaret songs notably songs by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and those from the era of the Weimar Republic.

Though Robyn has thrived in cultural centres like London and Berlin she got her start in Australia's Working Men's Clubs, small-town venues scattered across the vast country which even today remain the bread-and-butter for comics and singers just starting out. She assures me that the rapport between the audience at those clubs and the lesbian anarchist up on stage was something special. `There was a mutual respect,' she recalls. `My working-class roots in the west of Adelaide no doubt helped. That plus the common love of a good old knees-up.'[2]

[edit] Arts

She also a director of arts festivals in Australia and overseas (including Cuba, the U.K. and U.S.A.), starting one in Tasmania, involved in events management and was commentator at the inaugural broadcast Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the ABC, Australia.[3]. She has been a television guest on The Michael Parkinson Show, Clive James at Home, Good News Week (ABC); Adelaide Festival 1998 (ABC National three-part series), the David Frost New Year Special, The Midday Show, Tonight Live, Review, Dateline, Denton, and Express.

[edit] Work

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A selection of her work includes:

[edit] Current positions held

[edit] Formerly

  • Artistic Director, Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 (2004-2006) resigned
  • Artistic Director, Melbourne International Arts Festival (2002-2004)
  • Advisor to the Artistic Program of 10 Days on the Island (Tasmania)(2001-2005)
  • Artistic Director, Adelaide Festival (1998 and 2000)
  • Artistic Advisor, Australia Day, Hannover EXPO 2000
  • Artistic Director, National Festival of Australian Theatre (1993-95) in Canberra
  • Chair, Community Cultural Development Board, Australia Council (1993-5)
  • Commonwealth Appointee to the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee (1994)
  • Artistic Counsel, Belvoir Street Theatre (1986)
  • Patron, National Affiliation of Arts Educators
  • Member of the Board, Helpmann Academy.

[edit] Honours

[edit] Arts awards

  • The Sydney Critics' Circle Award (1980)
  • The Henry Lawson Award (1980)
  • ARIA Awards (Best Soundtrack - Pack of Women 1986; Best Children's Album - Mrs Bottle 1989)
  • Australian Creative Fellowship(1991-93)

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Robyn Archer: Paul Rees catches up with one of Australia's cultural whirlwinds New Internationalist article by Paul Rees, August 1999
  3. ^ Robyn Archer online : The depArcher lounge : Biography & CV

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Barrie Kosky		 Director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts
1998–2000		 Succeeded by
Peter Sellars