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Archie Roach
Guest Performer, Skin One of Australia's national treasures, singer and songwriter Archie Roach, is making his debut with Bangarra Dance Theatre as a pivotal member of a production. Audiences at some performances of DanceClan 2 heard him singing with Ruby Hunter, but in Skin he is one of the key characters. Archie's first album, Charcoal Lane, was released in 1990 and earned him two ARIA awards and an Australian tour with Paul Kelly. He also toured the US, opening for Bob Dylan, and was a special guest of Joan Armatrading. Charcoal Lane was released in the USA and included in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums. Since then, he has released Jamu Dreaming and Looking for Butter Boy, touring to the UK several times, to Europe and North America. In 1996, he was a guest at every major Australian arts festival, and he has been featured in Womad Spain with Van Morrison and Suzanne Vega. He has not only been given awards for his music, he has been recognised for his contributions to Indigenous issues. In 1991 he was given a Human Rights Achievement Award and in 1996 he made a presentation to the Human Rights Commission enquiry into the stolen generations. Recently he completed Land of the Little Kings, a documentary about the Australian government assimilation policies, providing narration and music. He is recording his fourth album in 2000.
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Wayne Blair
Guest Performer, Skin Born 1971 in Taree, a descendant of the Butjala people of Queensland's Fraser Island. As a student at the Queensland University of Technology, he appeared in West Side Story, Three Sisters, The Rover, Touched, As You Like It and Fanshen before he graduated in 1997. For the Queensland Theatre Company, he has appeared in the education shows Loaded Stories and Blacked Up, and The Sunshine Club, which was also presented by the Sydney Theatre Company in the 2000 Sydney Festival. He appeared in Romeo and Juliet for the Bell Shakespeare Company, and in Black Shorts (with Kooemba Jdarra) for the Brisbane Festival. Wayne's TV credits include Wildside, All Saints, Water Rats and BackBerner. He has appeared in a feature film Mullet, and the short films Grace, The Tower, Fade 2 Black and Jubulj. He also wrote and directed the last two. Skin is his debut with Bangarra Dance Theatre.
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Rhimi Johnson Page
Guest Performer, Skin Born 1989 in Griffith, a descendant of the Wiradjuri people through his mother, dancer Rayma Johnson, the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh tribe through his father Russell Page. Rhimi made his debut in the Bangarra Dance Theatre production Black Vine 4. In Skin, he shares the role of the boy with Hunter Page-Lochard.
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Hunter Page-Lochard
Guest Performer, Skin Born 1993 in Sydney to Cynthia Lochard, formerly of the New York City Ballet, and Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director Stephen Page, a descendant of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh tribe. Hunter made his theatrical debut at six months in Bangarra's Praying Mantis Dreaming at the Cairns Civic Centre. With an inherited instinct to perform, he has been an informal entertainer since the age of two. More recently, he is one of a group of nine children performing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander song and dance at local festivals and at Admiralty House for the Governor-General of Australia, Sir William Deane, to launch a Web site dedicated to Child Protection Week. Hunter shares the role of the boy in Skin with Rhimi Johnson Page.
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John Harding
Dramaturg, Skin When John Harding was about 14, he began writing poetry. One of those first poems became the spine for his most successful play to date, Up The Road, which began as the inaugural production for the Ilbijerri Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative which he established. It was then developed at the 1995 Australian National Playwrights Conference and selected by Neil Armfield for the 1996 season of Company B at the Belvoir Street Theatre. From there it went on a national tour and in 1998 John was given the Australian Human Rights Award. John, who was born in Melbourne in 1966, has been writing for stage, radio and television for 15 years. With his background of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ancestors - Ku Ku people from Far North Queensland and TSI people from "Mabo country" as he puts it - he tends to find himself writing about Indigenous subjects. For instance, in 1989 he was commissioned by the Victorian Aboriginal Housing Board to write a play about the issues of Aboriginal housing, Not Just Bricks and Mortar. Having started as an actor, he supported his writing by working fulltime at a variety of jobs in Aboriginal education, Aboriginal affairs, as Aboriginal employment officer at Melbourne University and as ministerial advisor to the Victorian Government's Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. In 1997 he was given a two-year fellowship by the Australia Council. Since 1996, he has written the first Aboriginal sitcom, The Masters for SBS TV; Enuff for ABC Radio National, with a staging by La Mama planned for 2001; Shan for the National Institute of Dramatic Art; Pitchin, a TV series pilot submitted to Fox Studios, and another ABC Radio National commission, He ain't Heavy, He's my Yubba.
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Steve Francis
Musical Producer, Skin Steve Francis is a musical producer and composer who has worked with performers as diverse as Bob Geldof, the Divinyls and the Australian Ballet. Born in the UK, he grew up in Adelaide and began recording with his own band in the 1980s, going on to produce and engineer acts for major Australian record labels. Now with his own recording facility in Sydney's Kings Cross, he is able to focus on developing and recording a variety of artists, including Rani Kamahl, Glen Skuthorpe and Tali Gillespie. Steve has written and recorded music for ABC TV's award- winning Box, SBS TV's Passing Through, the Australian Film Commission's Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and Leah Purcell's solo show Box The Pony. For Bangarra Dance Theatre he has produced the music of Fish, co-composed Bipotim for DanceClan, acted as musical director for the company's recent Womad performances and produced the music for Skin.
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Jennifer Irwin
Costume Designer, Skin From 1981 to 1997, Jennifer worked with the Sydney Dance Company as resident wardrobe supervisor and then costume designer. In 1984, she studied at La Scala, Milan, on a grant from the Australia Council. The first of 16 design commissions from the SDC was Sirens for Graeme Murphy in 1986. Others included Synergy with Synergy, Shining, Kraanerg, Piano Sonata, Ohad Naharin's Arbos, Gideon Obarzanek's Saccharine Suite and Stephen Page's Mooggrah. Her dance film credits include designing the SDC's Sensing for ABC TV, and Gluttony in the Seven Deadly Sins series. Jennifer cut all the costumes for the feature films The Matrix and Mission: Impossible 2. Among her designs for the stage in the past few years have been Stephen Page's Alchemy and Rites, Stanton Welch's X for the Australian Ballet and Cyrano de Bergerac for the Sydney Theatre Company. Jennifer has been designing costumes for Bangarra Dance Theatre since 1992: Praying Mantis Dreaming, Ochres, Fish, the Festival of the Dreaming opening ceremony, Skin and the Indigenous welcome, Tubowgule, for the Olympic Arts Festival, and the Indigenous segment of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. She is also designing all the costumes for the Olympic Games closing ceremony and a Federation of Australia commemoration in January 2001.
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Peter England
Set Designer, Skin Peter has completed a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (Honours) at the University of NSW and a Bachelor of Performing Arts in Design at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. In 1997 he was awarded the NIDA Mike Walsh Travelling Fellowship. For Opera Australia, he has designed Simon Boccanegra for the 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, La Boheme in 1999 and Madama Butterfly in 1997 which won the Green Room Award for Best Design. For the Sydney Theatre Company he has designed Harold Pinter's Betrayal in 1999 and Louis Nowra's The Jungle in 1996. For the Australian Ballet in collaboration with Bangarra Dance Theatre he designed Rites in 1997. Peter's event and installation designs include Production Designer for the City of Sydney's New Years Eve Millenium Celebrations including the Sea Creatures Lantern Parade and New Years Eve Celebrations for both 1996 and 1997 and was co-designer of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Flag Handover Ceremony. Peter's work for Bangarra Dance Theatre includes Skin for the Olympic Arts Festival 2000, DanceClan 2 and The Dreaming in 1999 and Fish in 1997. He is also a set designer for segments in both the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
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Karen Norris
Lighting Designer, Skin Born in New Zealand of Maori descent, Karen has worked in lighting for more than 15 years. In 1988 she received an Australia Council grant to work as assistant to lighting designer Nigel Levings. Since 1989 she has gained many credits as a designer in Australia and New Zealand, working in theatre, film and video. In 1995 she completed a film/video course and wrote and directed a short film. Now based in London, where she is resident designer for the dance company Jazzxchange, Karen has recently designed lighting for venues as varied as Sadler's Wells, the National Portrait Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art and The Place. In 1999 she did the lighting design for The Dreaming, which made its debut in the UK.
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