In June, NIDA’s Dr Suzanne Osmond (Education Developer) and Corinne Heskett (Head of Costume) were assisted by NIDA to attend the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ2023).
A workshop facilitated by Dr Suzanne Osmond (NIDA) and Dr Madeline Taylor (QUT), in which ideas and strategies were shared between costume educators from Canada, Hungary, Venezuela, USA, Brazil, Argentina, UK and Hong Kong. Ideas were pooled to identify common threads, and the conceptual and practical responses to implement in teaching practices.
Held in Prague, PQ is the largest international festival event dedicated to performance design, scenography and theatre architecture. During the 11 days, PQ attracted over 8,000 professionals, students and other active participants from 106 countries for a program consisting of exhibitions, lectures, workshops and performances. The main theme of the festival was RARE. In the current state of uncertainty and epochal change, the festival called on performance designers, scenographers, educators, students and performance practitioners to use their RARE imagination and creativity to envision what the world of theatre could look like in the post-pandemic future.
Corinne in the award-winning Finnish student exhibit which was called Suo, Silent, Disco. This interactive installation piece combined traces of the rare, typical and controversial Finnish suo (swamp, bog or peatland) into a light-hearted multi-sensory experiment. Participants were invited to share the playful and audiovisual space of the sticky unknown.
During the festival, Sue took part in several panel discussions and meetings about education and costume research and facilitated a workshop with Dr Madeline Taylor from QUT called Futuring Costume Pedagogy. Corinne was an enthusiastic participant in this workshop, as well as number of other workshops including Second Skin Patternmaking; Transforming Artistic Practices; and Exploring Digital Costume Methods in Performance Design. Corinne and Sue also attended a number of other panel discussions and talks, networked with international professional peers, as well as watched and took part in numerous performances and interactive displays.
Jacob Nash, Wesley Enoch and Stephen Page in the panel discussion Local Global perspectives on Indigenous Materialities of Performance. The image shown on the screen was of the circular structure from Bangarra’s production of Bennelong (2017) that formed a key part of the Australian exhibit.
In the Exhibition of Countries, the Australian pavilion, designed by NIDA graduate Jacob Nash (Design 2005), was a highlight. This was accompanied by a panel discussion about decolonising design and performance practices with Jacob, Stephen Page, Wesley Enoch, and several other international speakers from Brazil, Canada and Nigeria.
TheCanadian Homebuddies are a roving collection of anthropomorphised houses ready to find their new owners. The performance asked viewers to re-examine the relationship between the homes of our bodies and the bodies of our homes.
Being represented at this significant festival solidifies NIDA’s position on the world stage as far as the conversations being had internationally about sustainability, decolonisation, equity, gender diversity and the use of new technologies in performing arts education and professional practice.
