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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Kelly Burke

Venice Biennale: regional Australian theatre company wins prestigious Golden Lion

Back to Back theatre’s artistic director Bruce Gladwin during rehearsals with Sarah Mainwaring, Simon Laherty and Scott Price in Geelong in 2021
Back to Back theatre’s artistic director, Bruce Gladwin, front, during rehearsals with, from left, Sarah Mainwaring, Simon Laherty and Scott Price in Geelong in 2021. Gladwin called the Golden Lion win at the Venice Biennale ‘thrilling and humbling’. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

An independent Australian theatre company from regional Victoria has been awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement in theatre by the Venice Biennale.

Geelong’s Back to Back Theatre, which draws its ensemble cast from neurodivergent and disabled communities, will be presented with the award when the company travels to Italy in June to perform one of its most acclaimed productions, Food Court. The work takes as its starting point the James Bulger murder case, in which two 12-year-old boys abducted, tortured and murdered a toddler in Merseyside in the UK in 1993.

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