Opening up the Australian Performing Arts Collection
The Frank Van Straten aims to commission stories from the Australian Performing Arts Collection. It offers special access to collections for your project, along with a stipend of $15,000 and commences in July each year.
Applications for the 2024 Fellowship are now open and close on March 15th 2024.
Download the guidelines and for more information contact the Research Coordinator at researchservice@artscentremelbourne.com.au.
Frank Van Straten AM played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Australian Performing Arts Collection. As the first archivist at what was then the Performing Arts Museum, and its founding director, he has done more than any other individual to seed this rich collection and secure its longevity. Today the Australian Performing Arts Collection is the nation’s leading collection of performing arts materials, documenting Australia’s circus, dance, music, opera and theatre heritage. It consists of 737,000+ items including costumes, designs, programs, photographs, posters, props, personal memorabilia and archival material.
The key objective of the Frank Van Straten Fellowship program is to tell stories from the Australian Performing Arts Collection through high quality research and/or creative works that will resonate with diverse audiences. The Fellow will be given the time, space and support to undertake research aligned to Australian Performing Arts Collection’s key subject areas: circus, dance, music, opera and theatre (which includes comedy, vaudeville and magic). The program also creates opportunities for the wider community to access the Australian Performing Arts Collection through the outcomes of Fellowship projects.
The Frank Van Straten Fellowship supported by ‘The Van Straten and Turley Foundation'.
Dr Amaara Raheem is a dance practitioner asking the question “Can an archive become a meeting place?” Her recreation of the Chunky Move work C.O.R.R.U.P.T.E.D II provides an opportunity for creators to marry bodily memory with archival memory from the Australian Performing Arts Collection. The workshops and filmed recreation of the piece provides a starting point for teaching, workshops, discussion.
Curator and photographic artist, Angela Bailey’s fellowship will result in The GLAD Project, an exploration into the often secreted queer lives of performance artists. Bailey notes that there are queer stories and queer icons across the full breadth of the Australian Performing Arts Collection; “This project is an opportunity to further bring out and highlight these queer lives and connections, and to open up the Collection for broader discovery”. The project will result in a multi-faceted creative work with an online exhibition, physical installation as well as a performative element. The work is expected to be presented around June 2023.
The Frank Van Straten Research Fellowship for 2021 was awarded to Ms Cathy Pryor. Cathy’s project Rare Flowers and Golden Butterflies - women and magic in mid-20th century Australia, focuses on the careers of three female magicians; Esme Levante, Myrtle Roberts and Loretta “Moi-Yo” Miller Montes. Often hired as attractive assistants to be sawn in half or to be the foil for other tricks, Rare Flowers and Golden Butterflies demonstrates that women played a pivotal role both on stage and behind the scenes through telling the stories of their fascinating careers.
Discover more about these female magicians in the online exhibition – Rare Flowers and Golden Butterflies
Listen to the outcome of Cathy’s research, an audio documentary – The Illusory world of Esme Levante for Radio National’s The History Listen
Dr Rice used her fellowship opportunity to research a number of historical theatrical performances documented in the Australian Performing Arts Collection and produce a series of performative podcasts that bring these forgotten stories of the Australian stage to life. Dr Rice explored a range of subjects including the 1919 Influenza Pandemic, child performers and a fight for copyright in the early twentieth century.
Read more about Dr Rice’s research:
Theatre and the Influenza Pandemic of 1919
Researching the Performing Arts Collection Without Leaving Home
Listen to the creative docu-drama podcast about what happened to Melbourne theatre during the 1919 pandemic in Performing the Past
