Dr. Grace Pundyk is a Melbourne-based artist, performer, author and playwright. Her inclination is to create work that often aligns with the forgotten and peripheral. She has performed inside a giant birds nest (to the sound of birdsong); danced kathak on a moving river barge, at 4am, amidst giant floating lotuses; staged a play inside a freight car at a disused rail yard; and also skinned marsupial roadkill from which she makes parchment. Books include the global travel narrative about bees and honey, The Honey Trail (St Martin’s Press, 2010), and Sons of Sindbad: the photographs (Arabian Publishing, London, 2006), which draws on the once forgotten work of Australian maritime writer and photographer, Alan Villiers. Appearances at various festivals include Ten Days on the Island, the Melbourne Festival, White Night, and the Sydney and Brisbane writers festivals.
Steppe, Grace's first play, is based on ‘found’ letters written by her Polish grandmother. The play premiered at the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival and was short-listed for the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award 2016. Steppe was also selected for the 11th Women’s International Playwrights Conference, held in Santiago, Chile in 2018, and has been translated into Polish and Spanish.
Read Grace's State of Play commissioned essay KEEP GOING SISTER I WILL TRANSLATE FOR YOU
| STEPPE (A JOURNEY OF UNFORGETTING) by Dr Grace Pundyk |
