BRON BATTEN
Bron Batten is an Australian theatre-artist with over 10 years of experience writing, producing and performing her work nationally and internationally.
Bron's award winning pieces have been presented at venues and festivals such as The Soho Theatre London, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern London, La Puta Calle Paris, The Space Glasgow, Dark MOFO, The Melbourne Theatre Company, The Malthouse Theatre, Arts House, Performance Space Sydney, Vitalstatistix Adelaide, PICA and The Wheeler Centre.
She has received funding from The Australia Council for the Arts and fellowships from the Ian Potter Foundation to undertake professional development programs in Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Avignon, Zurich, Berlin, Glasgow and New York.
Bron was awarded a residency at the prestigious Cite Des Arts Internationale in Paris and the Lithuanian Composers Union in Druskininkai, Lithuania at the start of 2015 and has been selected to participate in numerous international residencies in Scotland, France and Southbank Centre London, facilitated by The Live Art Development Agency (LADA) in the UK.
She was the co-founder and curator of The Last Tuesday Society (with Richard Higgins) a company which provided a unique platform for artists to develop their practice in a live environment. The Last Tuesday Society presented artists such as post, Lara Thoms, Sisters Grimm and Elbow Room, They notably presented The YouTube Comment Orchestra at the Malthouse Theatre and were commissioned to produce the closing event of the NEON Festival at the Melbourne Theatre Company.
‘Brilliant… An incredible line up that runs the gamut from hilarity to pathos. An evening of pure poignant joy FIVE STARS’ –The Herald Sun
Other career highlights include Sweet Child of Mine, which was devised and performed in collaboration with Bron’s elderly parents for the Melbourne Fringe Festival, where it won the award for Best Experimental Performance.
Sweet Child of Mine has since toured to The Adelaide Fringe Festival where it won a Special Commendation for Best Theatre, and Perth Fringe World where it was nominated for Best Theatre Production. Sweet Child of Mine was presented in 2013 at The Neo-Futurist's theatre in Andersonville Chicago with presentation funding from The Australia Council and Creative Victoria. It was also presented at BATS Theatre in Wellington New Zealand in 2016 and co-presented by Gilded Balloon for the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe UK.
'Instantly relatable and delightfully unpredictable, Sweet Child of Mine is case-in-point for the transformative power of theatre FOUR STARS’ Timeout Chicago
For 6 years Bron was the Creative Producer of The Village at The Falls Music and Arts Festival in Lorne, annually attended by over 17,000 people, curating and delivering the live art and performance program.
In 2014 Bron developed the live-art work Use Your Illusion in collaboration with a qualified clinical hypnotist, which was presented as part of Field Theory's 'Site is Set' series. Bron was a performer in Field Theory's durational radio installation 9000 Minutes as part of Melbourne's 2016 Public Art Biennial, co-produced by The Melbourne International Arts Festival.
Her recent live-art work Onstage Dating involved going on first dates with audience volunteers live on stage. It was commissioned for the 2016 Festival of Live Art at Arts House, then was then re-mounted at the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival where it won the Adelaide Fringe Touring Award and was also nominated for Best Performance. Onstage Dating was presented in Perth, Auckland, Wellington NZ and Adelaide in early 2017 where it was nominated for Best Theatre at Perth Fringe World Festival and nominated for Best Performer at the New Zealand Fringe Awards. Bron was also nominated for two Green Room Theatre Awards including Innovation in Audience Participation and Best Performer.
Onstage Dating had further national Australian presentations at the Darwin Arts Festival and Brisbane Festival in August and September 2017 and toured to the renowned Soho Theatre on London’s West End and Underbelly Cowgate for The Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018. Touring for Onstage Dating in 2019 saw the work presented at The Salamanca Arts Centre Hobart, Mittagong Playhouse, The Butterfly Club Melbourne and Komedia in Brighton UK. Onstage Dating also had a European premiere at The Turda International Theatre Festival in Romania.
'Onstage Dating is one of the cleverest, funniest, and most shockingly incredulous experiences of risk I’ve ever seen in a theatre... It is smart as hell, shocking, hilarious, incredibly well-made, awkward and delicious' - The Plus Ones Wellington
Bron also presented the collaborative durational project The Hole at the Performing Arts Festival in Berlin and the prestigious Prague Quadrennial throughout May and June 2019, in collaboration with Australian and Canadian artists Lisa Hirmer, Tessa Leong, Sete Tele and Malcolm Whittaker.
Bron’s newest work Waterloo (Outside Eye Direction by Gary Abrahams) premiered at the 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival where it won the Arts House Evolution Award and The Summerhall Edinburgh Touring Award, as well as being nominated for Best Performance at the festival.
Waterloo was then presented at The Blue Room Theatre as part of the 2020 FRINGE WORLD Festival, where it won a Weekly Award for Best Theatre, eventually taking out the overall Best Theatre Category Award across the whole festival. Waterloo was also nominated for Best Production in the Experimental and Contemporary category at the 2020 Green Room Awards and was recently presented at Brown’s Mart Theatre for the 2021 Darwin Festival.
‘Far more than a story about unlikely lovers… Astonishing… FOUR STARS’ Timeout
Bron has sat on The Green Room Award Panel for Independent Theatre and is currently a guest lecturer in contemporary performance and improvisation at The Victorian College of the Arts and Deakin University.
