MAEVE MARSDEN

Maeve Marsden is a writer, performer, producer and director who works across both main stage and fringe / independent venues and festivals. In 2020, she was a member of Belvoir Theatre’s Philip Parsons Early-Career Playwrights Lab.

Maeve directs Queerstories, a national storytelling project with an award-winning podcast that has brought more than 250 writers to the stage at sold out events around the country, with a collection of stories Maeve edited, published by Hachette and launched at the Sydney Opera House in 2018.

Mother’s Ruin: A Cabaret about Gin, a theatrical cabaret Maeve co-created toured consistently for four years, with three sold out UK tours and critically acclaimed seasons at Sydney Festival, Sydney Opera House, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Melbourne Cabaret Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as well as regional venues in Australia and New Zealand. Mother’s Ruin was named one of Time Out’s Best 10 Shows on Sydney Stages 2017, and was nominated Best Cabaret in the Perth Fringe World Awards, BroadwayWorld Awards and Sydney Theatre Awards, and Best Writing, Green Room Awards.

The follow up production for the creative team, Fat Musicals: A Body of Work, premiered in 2019 at Darlinghurst Theatre Company and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The production was booked to tour extensively in 2020, but seasons were cancelled due to Covid restrictions.

Winner Best Cabaret, Sydney Fringe 2016, Lady Sings it Better, a feminist comedy cabaret act Maeve directs and performs in has been touring to critical acclaim for 8 years, with seasons at Sydney Comedy Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Festival of Voices (Tasmania) and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, among others.

A well-respected cultural commentator, Maeve has hosted events for Sydney Writer’s Festival, Antidote Festival at the Sydney Opera House, Mudgee Readers’ Festival, Newcastle Writer’s Festival, Adelaide Writer’s Week, Sydney Mardi Gras and Ubud Writer’s Festival in Bali. In 2019 and 2020, Maeve curated Queer Thinking, Sydney Mardi Gras’ two-day talks and ideas festival.

She is regularly called upon to contribute to LGBTQI+ creative projects, editing the ABC’s Sydney Mardi Gras 40th Anniversary Magazine in 2018 and narrating ABC radio documentary The Making of Mardi Gras for The History Listen that same year.

As an opinion writer, essayist and critic, her work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian Australia, Overland, Junkee, ABC, SBS, ArtsHub, Daily Review, Archer Magazine and Audrey Journal.

In 2019, Maeve collaborated with Google’s Creative Labs to create My Mother’s Kitchen, (link only works on phones) an interactive podcast and storytelling experiment that features Queerstories storytellers. The project launched at Sheffield Documentary Festival in the UK.

Maeve likes dancing, cheese, and TV melodramas with good ethics and bad dialogue.