Performers

Director: Brenda Addie

BRENDA ADDIE has had a thirty-year career in the performing arts in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada and has worked with luminaries such as Richard Todd, Meryl Streep, Max Von Sydow, Michael York, Sam Neil and Sooty. In 2005 she co-authored and produced the stage play Quilting the Armour – the story of the Kelly women for the 125th anniversary of the Ned Kelly siege in Glenrowan and which also forms the basis for her current M.A. candidature at Melbourne University. Brenda’s interest in Irish literature and theatre was fuelled by her salon presentation of Linda Weste’s From the Diaries of Maude Gonne and she is delighted to bring James Joyce to life once more for the 2008 Bloom’s Day in Melbourne.

DAVID ADAMSON has performed for Melbourne Workers Theatre (Black Cargo, Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?, Yanagai! Yanagai!), Melbourne Theatre Company (Sondheim’s Assassins), Playbox, Handspan, and many others. He has sung in many languages, genres, a capella ensembles, and various theatrical productions. He is a founder member of the Teapot Ensemble of Australia, and is currently also teaching drama at Deakin University. He will be performing Louis Esson’s The Time Is Not Yet Ripe, this coming September.

KIRK ALEXANDER has been in theatre, film and narration for nearly four decades. As a producer he has worked with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra and Concordis Choir on the epic poem Sky Saga (1943, to commemorate Australia’s involvement in the Battle of Britain). He writes copious lyrics for a favourite musician, Nicolas Buc, and is presently working on a new Sherlock Holmes play by the prolific Australian playwright, Cennarth Fox. He is also adapting for stage or film a period comedy of 1930s New Guinea. This is unaccountably his first journey into Bloomsday. Ergo: an artistic virgin.

ROD BAKER (aka The Bard of North Fitzroy) is a singer/songwriter who has produced 6 albums of original songs since 1990 and worked on many recordings. He is a much sought after vocal coach and facilities various creative workshops. He has worked with Bloomsday in Melbourne since 1995 in a variety of roles. As a performer he has also performed with diverse groups including the band Smiling for Beginners, the early music ensemble Les Six and has performed recitals and commissioned and performed original song cycles and works of musical theatre. His latest album Vienna Dilemma is available from www.onerod.com

BILL JOHNSTON is an actor, singer and story-teller of considerable experience. Since 1982 he has played in a great variety of plays by playwrights as diverse as Beckett, Brecht, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, Ibsen and Ron Blair (as the Christian Brother). He has appeared in over 20 films and in a number of television series including Prisoner, Neighbours, The Petrov Affair and Blue Heelers. Almost from the beginning (though not quite) Bill has featured in numerous roles in the unique annual 16th. June Bloomsday in Melbourne celebrations. Some may recall such eccentricities as the frenzied Swiss singer crying his heart out because he had just been buried alive. He was a founder, with Howard Stanley, of the Chambers Theatre Company . Highlights with Chambers included the roles of Judge Brack (Hedda Gabler), Sir George Croft (Mrs. Warren’s Profession), Polonius (Hamlet), Ivan Nyukin (Chekhov’s Smoking is Bad for You) and First Voice in Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

KEVIN LO was born and raised in the deep south of New Zealand – Invercargill (where Joyce’s sister died after long service as a Mercy nun – the nuns destroyed the siblings’ correspondence). His teachers in New Zealand have included Kevin Lefohn (violin), Nich Genn-Harris (flute) and he also plays piano, guitar and anything else that comes his way. Presently, he is studying first year Medicine at the University of Melbourne whilst having ambitions to start a band. Bloomsday is delighted to welcome him to the first gig of this kind he has ever done.

JANE McARTHUR A graduate of the National Theatre Drama School, Jane is new to the Bloomsday. Previous work in Melbourne theatre includes the 2007 season of Short and Sweet - working with Brenda Addie on "The Knitting Circle", two seasons in "Quilting the Armour" directed by Rodney Hall, "I Start Again" for A is for ATLAS and "Amour Armour" for Play Up Theatre Company. Recently Jane also played a supporting lead role in Ben Hackworth's feature film "Corroboree", which was officially selected for the Toronto Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. Other work includes television commercials, short films and voice -over work. When not performing, Jane studies classical piano.

GREG ROCHLIN is a member of the Bloomsday Committee and its webmaster, as well as being an accomplished musician and scriptwriter.

ANNA SCHEER studied theatre in London at the Drama Studio, before taking masterclasses with seminal figures such as Peter Brook and Yoshi Oida (Peter Brook Ensemble), Monika Pagneaux and Iben Nagel Rasmussen (Odin Teatret). She acted in the United Kingdom for ten years before moving to Berlin where she performed in the prestigious Volksbühne theatre in addition to co-founding a theatre group, Die Ratten, which was awarded the Academy of Arts prize for performing arts in 1995. In November 2006 she relocated to Melbourne to take up an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship in 2008 for her Master of Arts research at the University of Melbourne. She was recently seen in the Union House production of Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life, directed by Susie Dee.

CASSANDRA WILLIAMS is currently completing an Honours degree at Deakin University focussing on the potential of avatars in postmodern art. She has most recently performed in JYM's Sweet Charity, and has been involved in a number of other productions both on and off stage. She is thoroughly enjoying the challenge of finding ways to integrate digital elements with the live performance for Bloomsday.

SEMINARIANS

WOLFGANG EUBEL, graduate of the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Lower Saxony in Literature, Music, Philosophy and Psychology. He began reading English Literature systematically from Beowulf to Virgina Woolf (and beyond) after retiring and migrating to Australia in 2001. He has been spellbound by Finnegans Wake and is happy to share one of the key-results of his studies with us.Comments or questions regarding today’s talk and inquiries about participating in a Finnegans Wake reading group are very welcome: wolfgangeubel@hotmail.com. His next lecture will be on "Was JS Bach an Atheist?" at 110 Grey St., East Melbourne (Uniting Church) on 9 December at 8 pm.

BARRY CLELAND is a past President (2004-5) of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, and is currently its Librarian and a demonstrator. His passion for astronomy was ignited in his childhood when he tried to understand what he was looking at in the night sky. On retirement in 2000 from being CEO of the Cleland family controlled public company, he studied Astrophysics at Monash for four years and has tutored in astronomy since 2002.

PHILIP HARVEY is a Melbourne poet, and poetry editor of Eureka Street, the Jesuit online journal. He has been a member of the Bloomsday in Melbourne committee for many years, and a prolific producer of ideas for scripts.