The traditional role of the director as main interpreter of texts is being yielded as territory arguably belonging to the actors. Over-worked and under-paid, directors work in isolation in an atmosphere of general artistic timidity and in a climate where political passion is scorned, where writers lack ambition and where the media tends to see anything ‘Australian’ as a box-office disaster. The inspirational, confident, sensitive, educated, intuitive, musician-cum-visual-artist of the future will deserve a far more luminous name than mere ‘director’.

Aubrey Mellor is a leading Australian Theatre Director, and was formerly Director of Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre - his fourth Artistic Directorship of a theatre company. He is well known as an acting teacher to a generation of acclaimed Australian actors. Positions he has held include; Joint Artistic Director of Nimrod Theatre Company, Deputy Director of NIDA, Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, Artistic Director of Playbox and currently Director of NIDA.

Terernce Clarke
The Director and Need

Is the director necessary? What Is the need to direct? What does the director need to do the job? And perhaps most importantly, the need for directors’ to unite. Clarke will also touch on the need for change with regard to elitism in the theatre: the inferior position of the Assistant Director; the theatre and sport and the director and the corporation.Terence Clarke is a graduate of Sydney University. He has acted in English repertory, for Nimrod (Horatio/Rosencrantz to John Bell’s Hamlet) and for the National Theatre Company, Perth, where he was for over two years Associate Director. He was foundation Artistic Director of the first regional professional theatre company in Australia, the Hunter Valley Theatre Company, and has been the Artistic Director of the Playwrights Conference and Head of Directing at NIDA. He has written the music for several shows, most notably three musicals with book and lyrics by Nick Enright: The Venetian Twins, Variations (winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Drama, 1983), and Summer Rain. He has directed over 120 productions all over Australia including numerous musicals.