THEATRE NETWORK NSW
Kate Smith NSW Arts Minister
I
t is an honour and a serious undertaking to be the NSW Arts Minister.
I acknowledge that I write this response from my home on Wiradjuri land. It is a great privilege to live, work and create on this beautiful Country. I pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging and I recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. What and who do we turn to, to make sense of loss, pain, sorrow, and fear? During lock down millions of Australians turned to the arts, to artists for succour, for respite and release. Across the world our appetite for stories – in whatever form – took on new dimensions in response to the isolation and challenges we collectively experienced as we bore witness to the worst pandemic in history. An incredible outpouring of creativity occurred online in response to the pandemic. Artists played, composed, danced, taught, wrote, rehearsed and read in forums online- cobbling together cabarets, choirs, mini-desk concerts, musicals, play readings, life-drawing classes, virtual exhibitions and so much more. The artists instinctive response to lockdown was to connect and to share, to unite the wider community in whatever way they could. The thing is this is normal behaviour for an artist. It is not new. This is what they do. Risk, resilience and imagination is their territory. The artists were made for these times.
A comedic writer, cabaret artist and actor Kate Smith’s works have toured extensively throughout Australia, the U.K, Hong Kong and the U.S.A. Theatre highlights: One-woman show, Wanderlust, Bangers and Mash, The No Chance In Hell Hotel, The Unspeakable Itch, Oh My God I Have Been Kidnapped and I Hate What I Am Wearing (co-written with Drew Fairley), Beatches,(WITS Festival), Horrible Harriet (CDP), Mighty, (Lingua Franca). Television: All Saints, Blackjack, Spirited, 30 Seconds, Totally Full Frontal, Beauty & The Beast and Kate and Julia, with Julia Zemiro. The 2019 recipient of Create NSW’s Creative Development Fellowship, Kate also holds a PhD in performance studies. The fellowship extends her practice, which over twenty years has evolved from stand-up to playwriting, academia, to cross-sector interdisciplinary arts practice, creative mentoring and profile raising for regional arts.
They adapt, they respond, they transmute, translate and transform our understandings of complex events emotions and nurture us through the very act of living and being. The arts give us context, reflect our stories, and crucially, help us make sense of who and what we are.
www.tnn.org.au
Kate Smith
29
