MARI LOUREY

Mari Lourey (co-facilitator/dramaturg/creative producer) is a playwright, dramaturg, theatre maker and occasional actor, based between Broome WA and Melbourne. Over 25 years she has developed a practice of building work meticulously and collaboratively with innovative creative teams, creating dramatic works that push the boundaries of form and traditional narrative. She has a particular interest in working outside traditional methodologies of developing new work, particularly when it enables voices and stories beyond the traditional mainstream to be heard.

Her critically acclaimed plays include: Dirty Angels (La Mama and Regional Victorian tour); Bare Witness (fortyfivedownstairs and Performing Lines national Roadworks tour 2012), and most recent work in development, Dirt Cloud, winner of the Rodney Seaborn and Ross Trust Script Development Awards.

Between 2002-’07 she was researcher and playwright with innovative community arts and theatre company The Torch Project writing several plays with various Victorian communities, directed by Rachael Maza. Between 2007-09 she was Artistic Co-ordinator of the Big Issue arts project Homeless Not Artless, producing several shows in collaboration with director Adriano Cortese, and writers Arnold Zable and Alicia Sometimes.

She is a popular freelance dramaturg, whose interest in sharing methods of skills development has seen her facilitate numerous workshops and master-classes over many years including: currently writer in residence with Union House Theatre, Melbourne University 2020 (‘Virtual WIR) and in 2018; coordinating Goolarri Media’s Writing Program in Broome WA since 2013 - current; co-facilitating Ilbijerri Theatre Company’s inaugural Blak Writers Lab between 2010/13; and has guest lectured at Charles Sturt, Monash, Swinburne and Victoria Universities.

Starting out in music as a singer, she first trained in theatre, then studied writing at RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing Course 2000-’03, and an Ma in Performance Writing, VCA, 2012.