I am a creative industry executive and artistic leader, with a key focus on cultural production, organisational growth and launching major events. Currently, I am the Artistic Director of The Brisbane Powerhouse, Queensland’s home for contemporary cultural practice.

 

Here, I lead a team of 42 staff as we program two main stage theatres and three additional venues, as well as an outdoor venue and a venue-wide gallery space, and are visited by more than 700,000 people a year, experiencing 1000+ ticketed performances, 145 free events and a further 380+ corporate events.

 

In my eight years as its artistic leader, more than 1 million people have bought almost $50m worth of tickets to Brisbane Powerhouse projects, and under my guidance we’ve achieved:

 

• 91% growth in local artists (from 737 in 2013 to 1408)
• 275 World Premieres across all disciplines
• 81% growth in ticket revenues (from $3.65m to $6.6m)
• 83% increase in event and conference revenue (from $1.2m to $2.2m)
• 41% growth in total ticketed attendance (from 121,514 to 171,314)
• Three record years in a row for ticket sales, transforming from large deficits to a $327,000 program surplus

 

While leading Brisbane Powerhouse, I have had the opportunity to launch a number of significant events.

 

In December 2014, I launched WONDERLAND, Brisbane’s festival of circus, sideshow and spectacle, featuring 29 shows over 10 days, 81 performances, and more than 120 individual artists. We followed this in February 2015 with MELT, Queensland’s major event celebrating LGBTI+ culture and creators. Later that year, we launched IRL Digital Festival, a new event celebrating the convergence between live arts and digital and gaming culture.

 

I’ve also enjoyed continuing the legacy of existing events at Brisbane Powerhouse, such as the Brisbane Comedy Festival (which has grown 40% under my direction, from 44,447 attendees to a record of 62,278), and hosting the Australian Performing Arts Market, the World Theatre Festival, World Press Photo and Brisbane Portrait Prize.

 

During my time, Brisbane Powerhouse has featured indigenous artists such as Hot Brown Honeys, Ilbijerri Theatre, the First Nation’s Peoples Party, and has made a strong commitment to the premiering of new first nations work, including Chasing Smoke by Casus Circus, Songlines, visual arts commissions by Rachel Sarra and Tori-Jay Mordey and many others. In July 2020, Brisbane Powerhouse was once of the first venues globally to reopen following the COVID-19 pandemic, with a program featuring iconic Brisbane companies called Lights On. Over five weeks, we featured groups such as Circa, Queensland Ballet, Briefs Factory International, QMusic and the QSO.

 

I’ve always found great joy in beginning new initiatives, especially major cultural events.

 

In 2019 and 2020 I served as inaugural Creative Director of Curiocity Brisbane, Queensland’s premier event for technology and creativity, and prior to that I was Artistic Director and Chief Executive of The Festival of Voices, the national festival celebrating the instrument of voice, and in 2010, I founded The Sydney Fringe, as its CEO and Festival Director.

 

At the Festival of Voices, we received a series of acknowledgments for its impact on Tasmanian culture and tourism, including the 2010 and 2011 Australian Business and Arts Foundation (AbaF) Awards, 2012 State Winner as Best Major Event for the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards, and 2013 Australia Day Award (Tas) for “Best Major Festival or Event”.

 

The Sydney Fringe launched as a significant cultural event for the NSW alternative and independent arts sector from day one, with 700+ performances of more than 250 shows and events in 53 inner city venues, events that we’re seen by over 100,000 attendees.

 

After receiving the Sir Keith Murdoch Prize for Leadership and Innovation and a 2000 Churchill Fellowship for my work in new work development, I spent seven years in New York City, where I initially served as Executive Director of the National Music Theatre Network and consulting director for the Theatre for the American Musical, before becoming the founding Executive Director and CEO of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), the world’s largest annual musical theatre event.

 

Heralded by the New York Times as “2004′s rookie of the year in NYC theater” and Time Out New York as “the Sundance for musical theatre”, the New York Musical Theatre Festival featured 1197 performances of 133 new musicals that I commissioned, developed and/or produced, with a key highlight being the Pulitzer Prize winning Next to Normal.

 

At NYMF I won the $100,000 Jujamcyn Theaters Prize, which is given annually to an international cultural organisation that has made an outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent for the performing arts. While in NYC I founded my production company Red Sand Media Partners, which was a producer of the TONY nominated and Obie and Drama Desk award winning Broadway musical [title of show]: A New Musical.

 

I returned to Australia in 2009 to be the Australian resident director of the musical Wicked, before returning to the festival, major event and cultural industry work that I loved. I feel fortunate that my career has allowed me to explore my interest in both deep and genuine collaborations, and international work.

 

This has meant partnering and co-presenting with such international arts venues as The Barbican, The Southbank Centre UK, The Taipei Digital Arts Centre, MONA, The London Natural History Museum, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, ARS Electronica, The BANFF Centre, and Joes Pub – The Public Theatre NYC.

 

At Brisbane Powerhouse, we have partnered with events such as The Melbourne International Comedy Festival; The Edinburgh Festival and Fringe; The Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Auckland Festivals; Sydney Mardi Gras and Midsumma; The Dublin Fringe; The Melbourne & Sydney Writers Festivals and The Brighton Digital Festival.