Artists
SANDRA FIONA LONG
Sandra Fiona Long
A writer, theatre maker and dramaturg working across performance, installation, site specific, multi-media and sound based works. She works closely with collaborators across forms, developing processes which can apply across forms, languages, abilities, media and perception.
Highlights include writer/director of vocal-visual theater Hades Fading (Hades Memudar), writer/performer of Birdcage Thursdays, Big West Festival, 45downstairs, and regional Victoria tour, writer/performer solo work Pancake Opus at La Mama 2015/18, writer for Duets for Lovers and Dreamers (recipient Ross Trust Script Development award) and Director/Writer for Of Frogs, and writing, performing and co-directing across several versions of Jack’s True Dream Service with Mainteater from 2021-2023, most recently at Artjog international arts festival in Jogjakarta and the Community festival of new media in Lombok. Sandra recently has been exploring works on paper with botanic forms, developing artworks, lanterns and designs for her online shop alongside entering the new realm of writing about her experiences with neurodiversity, healing, the spiritual journey and the arts at https://www.botanicmystic.com/
ARTIST SITE
https://www.botanicmystic.com/
Sandra Fiona Long and Ria Soemardjo
Their first collaboration was a shadow performance 22 years ago. Sandra was heavily pregnant at the time and Ria’s handcrafted shadow birds and a glowing moon emerged out of her belly in a ritualistic succession. In more recent years their collaborative work has focussed on creating sound and visual worlds emulating environments based in vocal composition, text, raw materials and light.
Weaving Ria’s evocative, textured soundscapes and compositions with Sandra’s poetic text and a myriad of visual and sound elements, they are interested in creating a space of heightened listening, holding space for contemplation, drawing awareness to the natural environment through sound and visual immersion.
Their most recent live work – Of Frogs – was inspired by frogs and our waterways, a performance ritual of voice, percussion & shadow play interacting with water. They collaborated on Hades Fading (Hades Memudar), a bi-lingual vocal and visual performance work developed and performed in 2019 in Bandung and in Feb 2020 in Melbourne as part of AsiaTOPA, with Indonesian Theatre company Mainteater. Both these works were produced by Kath Papas Productions.
During the pandemic, they were commissioned to create two audio guided walks. Swallow Walk (Edwardes Lake in Reservoir) and Murmuring Walk (Sanatorium Lake in Mt Macedon (also with vocalist Charlotte Roberts). Both works were inspired by the surrounding environment and it’s natural rhythms. They are currently preparing for two performance events at La Mama theatre, Surat-suratnya, in collaboration with Indonesian director Wawan Sofwan, which reflects on the intergenerational impact of political violence and The Swallows (working title) another vocal and sound based performance work about connection with nature in urban environments, in collaboration with actor Helen Morse, and also produced by Kath papas Productions.
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