Image: Andi Crown

The Thelma and Louise Album

Julia Croft & Nisha Madhan

Julia Croft is a performance maker based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. Julia’s practice draws on feminist and queer theory to design performance works that create imaginative cracks in pervasive power structures and the scientific-poetic. Since 2015 she has created 10 full length works including 4 solo works: If There’s Not Dancing at the Revolution, I’m Not Coming, Power Ballad, Working On My Night Moves and Terrapolis. These works have toured extensively throughout NZ as well as Australia, the UK, Singapore and Canada, including to the Yard Theatre (UK), Battersea Arts Centre (UK), The Cultch (CAN) and The Esplanade (SING) and LARVA (MX). Working On My Night Moves, (co-created with Nisha Madhan) won a prestigious Total Theatre Award at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and an Auckland Theatre Award for Excellence. It was recently presented as part of the Melbourne Rising 2022. She is currently creating a new solo for children, The Wild. She recently co-curated and produced Aoteroa’s inaugural Festival of Live Art [F.O.L.A] in Auckland.

Nisha Madhan (India/Aotearoa) is an independent artist and current Programming Manager of Basement Theatre (NZ), curating the leading independent live performance space with exciting and disruptive work since June 2019. Her eclectic career includes creating, directing, and producing experimental live art, performing on stage and screen, and critical writing. She took part in a three year arts residency curated by Basement Theatre, Forest Fringe (UK) and West Kowloon Cultural District (HK) and in 2021 was invited to be a guest curator of Live Dreams, a program within the experimental festival, Liveworks for Performance Space in Sydney. In 2022 she toured her co creation, Working On My Night Moves, a live art exploration of feminist futures to Rising Festival in Melbourne. She recently co-curated and produced Aoteroa’s inaugural Festival of Live Art [F.O.L.A] in Auckland. Nisha holds a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts in Acting from Unitec and a Bachelor of Art (First Class Honours) and a Masters (Distinction) from the University of Auckland in Theatre and Choreographic Research.

    ABOUT THE PROJECT

    ‘The Thelma and Louise Album’ (working title) is a feminist theatrical reimagining, splitting the film’s threads into a dreamscape of images and half recognised Americana, while ascending into the grid in a 1960s blue Mustang. Through iconic road movies, Elvis Presley, and NASA’s 1977 attempt to communicate to extraterrestrials (The Golden Record), the work grapples with the complicated legacy of American cinema and our post pandemic imagination.

    As 1980s/1990s children, we were raised on a diet of American pop culture. Those values, narratives and images wound their way around our collective unconscious, leading us to embed them unquestioned in our own mythologies, lives and relationships. Using the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics, we aim to take Thelma and Louise to their next logical iteration – where the work is realised in a fully feminist framework. We ditch lineal patriarchal models for multiple meanings, offering complex responses relevant to our own 21st century feminist experiences.

    Two real life best friends, a classic road trip soundtrack – the idea is audiences are left feeling all that’s really needed is to hold on to your best person and fly off that cliff together. Because who knows what’s coming next?

    Session Times
    PROFILE: Here’s Our Idea
    Friday 9 June, 11:30am AEST

    CONTACT

    Julia Croft
    julia.maria.croft@gmail.com