"Stunning... At the heart of her extraordinary shows is Finucane's volcanic physical presence and willingness to always go 'too far'"
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
"With their supreme artistry, they have developed a highly theatrical performance style all of their own, utterly convincing and entirely original"
Melbourne Stage
"A real treat...drew the audience into a world of soporific music contrasted with violent images. Moira Finucane has created a sinister world...highly original."
Manchester Evening News, UK
Moira Finucane is one of Australia's most extraordinary performance artists. Her collaboration with award winning theatre creator and director Jackie Smith (Patrick White Playwright Award) has created the signature work of Finucane & Smith. Intimate theatrical spectacles where cabaret, fairy tale, the gothic, variety and burlesque are melded into indelible visions of gender, power, violence and desire.
From the short sharp shock of the Burlesques; to entrancing, richly detailed monologues; full-length theatrical and site-specific journeys; and the creation of a unique form of cabaret that has earned Finucane the title Queen of Cabaret Bizarre - their work together is powered by an intense and meticulous physicality, a reckless diversity of music from early opera to hardcore industrial, and Finucane's surreal fantastical writing.
Producing over forty short and full length performance seasons for major arts festivals, theatres, galleries and clubs around Australia and internationally, Finucane & Smith's work has delighted and disturbed audiences and critics alike; internationally with sell-out seasons in festivals in Brighton, Edinburgh, Osaka, Yokohama, Stockholm, London, Manchester and Hong Kong and coming seasons in New Zealand, Slovenia, Canada, Italy and Croatia; and in Australia in myriad contexts including the international arts festivals of Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane, and iconic venues such as the Sydney Opera House, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, The Famous Spiegeltent [on and off shore], The Victorian Arts Centre and The Adelaide Festival Centre.
Their work has been nominated for 16 Australian Theatre Awards, and won 9, including 7 prestigious Green Room Awards for Most Outstanding Cabaret, Best Design, Best Direction, and Most Innovative Use of Form.
Finucane & Smith's Cabarets Bizarre include The Saucy Cantina - dishing up a volcanic menu of nine astonishing performance courses [touring nationally in 2002 and to Hong Kong's City Festival in 2004]; The Burlesque Hour - salubrious salon meets cutting edge culture, featuring Australia's hottest exponents of gender in performance and contemporary burlesque - a smash hit 'revolution in a chocolate box' seen by over 15,000 people since its premiere in 7 sell-out Australian seasons and in its first acclaimed international outing at The Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh 2005; and GOTHARAMA - unleashing the Gothic in all her wicked ways in a literary, vicious, blood red spectacle [premiering in 2005 to critical and audience acclaim, and touring nationally in 2006]
Their work across genres has led to diverse collaborations; with dance company Chunky Move in the site specific monstrous Dress Shop for Arcade; with installation artist and designer Anna Tregloan in the creation of Gotharama, The Banquet Room and Tregloan's BLACK; with over 20 renowned Australian artists across artforms in the forthcoming Carnival of Mysteries, with QUNUK in the commission of a cross-artform variety show of horror Bad Things; and with Japanese butoh dancer and shock cabaret artiste Yumi Umiumare in The Burlesque Hour, DasSHOKU Hora!, and The Banquet Room: whereby two demonic sisters settle down to the business of supper in their tiny banquet room.
"Highly charged, multifaceted, extraordinary... Finucane's characters are typically defined by a fragile beauty, a power and an elegance bordering on fragmentation and death'"
Realtime
"Those who have seen performance artist Moira Finucane in action would concur that she is less an actor and more a force of nature - her work is concentrated and intensely controlled, sexually charged and compellingly strange, minutely choreographed and unsettling'"
The Age
"Moira Finucane . Remarkable, outrageous and unforgettable'"
The Times, London
"High Octane...witty... intense...sometimes brutal'"
South China Morning Post
Finucane's work defies easy categorisation; her work is neither mainstream nor fringe. Whilst instigative, complex, political and provocative, Finucane's work maintains an imperative to entertain and to cherish the audience, and a deep respect for the audience lure and excitement of populist entertainment forms such as music hall, burlesque, carnival and cabaret.
My work arises from a passion for accessible, non-didactic, provocative and exciting entertainment through which to view liberation and oppression. It belongs to no performance genre but intersects with many - theatre, physical theatre, cabaret, performance art and dance. The characters I create - often surreal, archetypal and fantastical - are both complex and accessible, and allow for individual reading and discussion.
My work is committed to the audience as part of its primary motivation - the desire to draw the audience in, to involve them in the experience without forcing them in any way is central to my practice. I seek to evoke a world for the audience to enter and to create visions of liberation and oppression which open up rather than prescribe a discussion of gender, violence, power and desire.
Director & Artistic Collaborator Jackie Smith was born in Woomera, South Australia, and grew up in rural NSW. She now lives in Melbourne. Smith has worked in theatre as a writer, performer, and director. She has worked in community theatre, including a number of years with Sowaddyawont Theatre Company with women inmates of K Division, Pentridge Prison. This work culminated in the writing (with the company) and performance in the critically acclaimed inside out - women in prison. Smith's first solo performance works Space History (1992) and Pamela Rose Country (1994) won ABC Radio Awards.
The Aliens, Smith's first full length play, became joint winner of the 2001 Patrick White Playwright's Award, Australia's richest playwrights award for an unproduced work of theatre and prior to that was shortlisted for the 1999 Griffin/Colonial Award for new Australian Writing. After two years in development, The Aliens premiered at La Mama in 2002 to critical acclaim and a sell out season.
Smith is now working on a new play called The Flood. For the last ten years, Smith has worked extensively with Moira Finucane as artistic collaborator, co-creator and director.
2005 Green Room Award - Most innovative Use of Form Cabaret Gotharama
2005 Green Room Award - Best Design Gotharama
2004 Green Room Award - Most Outstanding Cabaret The Burlesque Hour
2004 Green Room Award - Best Direction Cabaret The Burlesque Hour
2004 Green Room Award - Best Design Cabaret The Burlesque Hour
2004 Green Room Award - Most Innovative Use of Form The Burlesque Hour
2004 InPress Magazine - Most Outstanding Performance of 2004 The Burlesque Hour
2004 Dance Australia List Most Interesting & Intriguing Dance Work The Burlesque Hour
1999 Green Room Award - Most Outstanding Cabaret The Saucy Cantina
1999 Melbourne Fringe Award - Most Outstanding Cabaret The Saucy Cantina
Feb 2007 Asian Contemporary Dance Festival, Dancebox, Osaka (Japan)
Nov 2005 Beyond Butoh International Dance Festival, Dancehouse, Melbourne
Dec 2003 SSS, Builders Arms, Melbourne
Green Room Award nominations (2005) - best artiste, best design, most innovative use of form
2005 Green Room Award - Most innovative Use of Form Cabaret Gotharama
2005 Green Room Award - Best Design Gotharama
Jun 2007 fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
Jun 2006 Adelaide Festival Centre - Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Apr 2006 Victorian Arts Centre - Fairfax Theatre
Jul 2005 premiere season fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
Green Room Award nominations (2004) - best artiste, best show, best direction, best design, most innovative use of form
Jun 2007 New Zealand International Cabaret Festival, Auckland (New Zealand)
Jun 2007 Burlesque Hour Bravissima!! Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Adelaide Festival Centre
Apr 2007 Burlesque Hour MORE!! Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Jun 2006 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Adelaide Festival Centre
Dec 2005 The Famous Spiegeltent, Arts Centre, Melbourne
Aug 2005 The Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh Fringe Festival (UK)
2004 Green Room Award - Most Outstanding Cabaret
2004 Green Room Award - Best Direction Cabaret
2004 Green Room Award - Best Design Cabaret
2004 Green Room Award - Most Innovative Use of Form
2004 InPress Magazine - Most Outstanding Performance of 2004
2004 Dance Australia List Most Interesting & Intriguing Dance Work
Nov 2004 The Famous Spiegeltent, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, Australia
Nov 2004 Lions Art Centre, Adelaide, Australia
Nov 2004 The Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia
Jul 2004 fortyfivedownstairs, premiere season, Melbourne, Australia
Green Room Award nominations - best artiste, most innovative use of form
Green Room Award - Best Cabaret Show
Melbourne Fringe Award - Best Cabaret
Jan 2004 Hong Kong City Festival, Hong Kong
July 2002 Brisbane Powerhouse Centre for Live Arts, Brisbane
Mar 2002 Adelaide Fringe Festival, Adelaide
Jan 2002 Victorian Arts Centre, midsumma Festival, Melbourne
Feb 2000 The Performance Space, Mardi Gras, Sydney
Sept 1999 Builders Arms Red Room, premiere season, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Melbourne
Oct 2001 Frankston Cultural Centre
Sept 2001 North Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne Fringe Festival
The Dress Shop - Commissioned by Chunky Move Dance Co.
May 2001 Cathedral Arcade, Melbourne
Bad Things - Commissioned by QUN UK
Sept 2000 Green Room, Manchester, QUN Festival, UK
Faith - the tale of a monstrous queen
Jun 2000 The National, Melbourne
Sept 1998 Victoria Vista Hotel, Maverick Arts Festival, Melbourne
Parlour Volatile - Commissioned by Brisbane Festival
1997 Parlour Volatile, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne
996 Parlour Volatile, produced by the Brisbane Festival, Brisbane
Cabaret Bizarre - The Early Works
1997 Glow in the Dark, Mardi Gras Supper Club, Sydney
1996 High Camp Cabaret, Festival of Contemporary Art, Gorman House, ACT
1996 Glow in the Dark, The Emerald Loft, Melbourne
1995 Feathers on the Floor at club boa, Artrage Festival, Perth
1995 The Salon, Hares & Hyenas, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Melbourne
I'm Too Sexy
1994 Artrage Festival, Perth, Australia
1993 Regimes of Sexuality, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
1993 Software, midsumma Festival, Melbourne
The Legendary Attractions & The Monologues
(Including Argentina Gina Catalina, The Dairy Queen, The Queen of Hearts, Soup, The Waitress, Romeo)
2007 Cafe Live Dance Series, Yokohama (Japan)
2007 Medium Rare, Pontus be Sea, Stockholm (Sweden)
2006 Medium Rare, Bush Hall, London (UK)
2005 The Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh ( UK )
2005 Medium Rare, Bush Hall, London ( UK )
2005 Duckie, London ( UK )
2004 Blue Rinse, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Melbourne
2003 Duckie - avant garde performance club London (UK)
2003 The Famous Spiegeltent Edinburgh (UK)
2003 The Blue Thong, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts
2002 The Famous Spiegeltent, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts
2001-2004 Word Is Out, spoken word festival, Melbourne
2001 The Famous Spiegeltent, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts
2000 Duckie, avant garde Performance Club, London (UK)
1999 - 2000 Live Acts, Chunky Move Dance Company, Melbourne
1999 Mardi Gras, Seymour Centre, Sydney
1998 Chunky Move, Storey Hall, Melbourne
1997 -98 Maverick Arts Festival, Melbourne,
1997 Festival Club, Melbourne International Arts Festival
1996 Festival of Contemporary Art, Canberra
1996 Brisbane Festival
