It wasn’t until Jodee Mundy was five years old and lost at Kmart that she realised the rest of her family was Deaf. She didn’t see ‘disability’ – only the love and protection of those closest to her.
In Personal, she conveys her experience as the only hearing person in a Deaf family, through a captivating blend of performance, storytelling, multimedia and animation. Mundy delves into the contradictions of inhabiting two worlds: living in a Deaf family, where using sign language is natural; and living in a society that sees only the family’s disability with voyeuristic curiosity.
The role children of Deaf adults play in paving the way for their family – as interpreter, authority, conduit – is central to this very intimate story. Created with a talented team of collaborators and presented in two languages via a virtual interpreter, Personal is a smart, touching and deeply personal work exploring dis/ability and how we perceive one another.
Presented as part of the Metro Arts x Brisbane Festival 2023 program.
Each performance of Personal has Auslan and English integrated throughout.
Join us for a free post-show panel discussion when you purchase a ticket to the Thursday 7 September 7:30pm performance.
Facilitated by Madeleine Little – Artistic Director of Undercover Artist Festival, featuring Jodee Mundy and other Festival Artists to be announced.
Disabled artists take the lead on discussions of authentic representation and disability cultural safety in the arts sector. On Our Terms will highlight the panelist’s arts practices, explore collaborative tools, and share insight about artists with disability taking agency in their work.
Join us for a free post-show artist talk and Q&A when you purchase a ticket to the Friday 8 September 7:30pm performance.
In conversation: Jodee Mundy with Julie Lyons, Brisbane based actress who has worked with Queensland Theatre of the Deaf and Australian Theatre of the Deaf, and Brett Casey, CEO of Deaf Connect.Join us for a free pre-show Tactile Tour of the performance space, for vision impaired patrons.
The Tactile Tour is available on Thursday 7 September, 6:50pm. You will be given the option to register when you book tickets for the Thursday performance.
Jodee Mundy OAM is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, writer and creative director. Growing up in an all- Deaf family, Jodee’s first language is Auslan while English is her second language. Jodee lives with a chronic illness and identifies as disabled and as a coda. Her highlights include: in 2015, ‘A Sanctuary in the City’, an installation created with primary carers attracting over two thousand of the general public to reflect on how people can care for themselves better commissioned by the City Of Melbourne. In 2017, ‘Imagined Touch’, created with Deafblind performers, culminating into a live show, installation, research report and documentary. Premiering at Arts House and then at Sydney Festival, this toured to the UK presented as part of Spill Festival of Performance, at the Barbican Centre. Imagined Touch received a Green Room Award for Innovation in Experiential Theatre.
In 2018, Jodee premiered a solo multimedia performance called ‘Personal’ which premiered at Arts House exploring her experience as the only hearing person in her Deaf family. Presented in Auslan and English, Personal presented at the Sydney Opera House, toured nine venues in regional Victoria and to Darwin Festival. Personal was nominated for a UK Whickers Award 2018, four Green Room Awards for Production, Writing, Direction and Design and for a Helpmanns Award for Best Visual or Physical Production in 2018.
From 2019- 2023, Jodee was the founding director of FUSE, a multi arts festival in inner city Melbourne and directed six festivals during the pandemic. In 2020, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her service to the performing arts.In 2023, Imagined Touch the documentary premiered at the Other Film Festival at ACMI, Women in Film Festival ACMI, ReelAbilities Film Festival and the Lincoln Center, New York.
Currently Jodee is new incoming Creative Producer- Access and Inclusion at Arts Centre Melbourne and Creative Lead for Alter State, a major festival celebrating Disability, creativity and culture. She is about to embark on her second tour of Personal along the eastern coast of Australia. www.jodeemundy.com
Merophie works as a theatre director/devisor and teacher.
Merophie’s theatre directing highlights include working with companies such as; The Business (winner of British Council Foreign Exchange Award for season of The Concert at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2003), Extended Play Projects (Tasmania), John Bolton, Die Roten Punkte, The Snuff Puppets, Polyglot Theatre and Mantalk (Melbourne Fringe, Melbourne International Festival Arts).
Merophie is Performance Director for Weekly Ticket, a performance project at Footscray Station that started in February 2016 and will finish in 2031. Merophie completed her PhD in 2020 and currently teaches at Deakin University, Melbourne.
A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Jenny Hector’s designs have been experienced nationally and internationally, including Hersch and Thoms Please Stand, Aphids Class Act, Chunky Move’s Rewards for the Tribe, Kamila Andini’s The Seen and The Unseen for Asia TOPA (Jakarta, Singapore and Melbourne), Sydney Chamber Opera’s The Howling Girls for Tokyo Festival World Competition 2019, and X-Risk, Kuopio Finland, collaborating with Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey, Pekka Mäkinen, and Johanna Tuukkanen.
Her lighting for Wilks, Dee and Cornelius’s RUNT, Fraught Outfit’s Exodus II, Prue Lang’s Stellar, Sandra Parker’s Out of Light received Green Room nominations for best lighting and Jo Lloyd’s Overture, Jacob Boehme’s Blood on the Dance Floor and Jodee Mundy’s Imagined Touch received Green Room Awards for Best Production, which Jenny realised both the lighting and set designs for.
Jenny is the recipient of two Green Room awards for Balletlab’s Miracle and Jenny Kemp’s, Madeleine and the 2016 Award for Technical Achievement.
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are artists who create unexpected situations for listening. They have a long term highly award collaborative practice. Their work is driven by curiosity and questioning about listening in human culture and seeks to evolve and engage with new processes and audiences, through public and participative interventions. This means they work with emerging technologies, cultural groups, sites, experts across practice and ensemble made processes. They are based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Current creative obsessions include acoustics of the dark, existential risk, and ecological and cultural impacts of practice.
Rhian Hinkley is a filmmaker and artist based in Melbourne. For ten years he was director of Nebula a portable arts and performance space run by Arts Access Victoria, creating collaborative theatrical and installation-based shows across the state of Victoria. His sculptural practice includes commissions from the City of Melbourne and exhibitions at multiple galleries including the Ian Potter Gallery of Art in Melbourne.
He has a longstanding relationship with Back to Back theatre, creating the video components of The shadow who’s prey the hunter becomes 2019, Lady eats Apple 2016, Ganesh Versus The Third Reich 2011, Food Court 2008 and Soft 2002. He has directed numerous version of the Democratic Set and Radial film projects for B2B including in Hong Kong 2019, Edinburgh 2015, Frieburg 2016 , Berlin 2017 and Dundee 2018. In 2020 he was the director of photography and editor of the short feature Shadow which premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin Texas 2022.
He has worked as designer on a number of collaborations with choreographer Sandra Parker including the shows Out of Light 2009, Document 2011, The Recording 2013, Small Details 2016, as well as the gallery installations Replacement 2022 and All Day and All Night 2019. Other dance production credits include I could pretend the sky is water by Trevor Patrick 2011, Origami by BalletLab 2006 and and Aorta 2014 by Stephanie Lake for Chunky Move. Film Credits include Buckstop (1997) winner of the Directors Award for technique at the New York animation festival, Face of the West 2000, finalist in the Tropfest Film Festival.
Sandra Fiona Long is a writer who works across art forms. Highlights include performance of her script Birdcage Thursdays in the Big West Festival Newest program, fortyfivedownstairs and a regional Victoria tour, solo performance work Pancake Opus 100 at La Mama Theatre, a Ross Trust Script Development award for Duets for Lovers and Dreamers performed at fortyfivedownstairs, collaborating with Indonesian company Mainteater for 18 years (working alongside Jodee Mundy) including directing and translating Happy 1000 1000 Bahagia (Fringe Award Innovation of Form, Green Room nominee Innovative New Form), directing Urat Jagat (Veins of the Universe) and Microcosm in 2015, and making theatre with many community organisations including DVA theatre, St Vincent DePaul, Migrant Resource Centre, FCARTS, Western Edge and Geelong Courthouse Youth Arts. In 2016 she completed a master of writing for performance.
Gavin Rose- Mundy is a translator, presenter, and consultant. Native in Auslan, English is his second language. Gavin is Deaf and was born into a Deaf family.
A well-known and passionate advocate of Auslan and promotion of and equity for Deaf people, Gavin has been teaching, storytelling and performing in a plethora of contexts.
As a creative, Gavin was an actor in ‘Sally and Possum’ an ABC childrens television series bringing Auslan to audiences on national television.
He was Auslan consultant and translator for a show called Personal written and performed by Jodee Mundy OAM, his sister. Personal was nominated for six awards and has been touring Australia since 2018.
For nearly thirty years, he has been teaching Auslan, linguistics and history at TAFE, as well as, working as an Auslan Model with Deaf Indigenous and non- Indigenous children in a range of metropoltian, regional and remote schools across Queensland.
He has worked for various organisations including: Education Queensland and Auslan Stage Left.
Genevieve graduated with a Bachelor of Performing Arts (Production and Design) from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2017. Since graduating she has worked across Australia in a variety of roles. She has also travelled to the UK to complete an internship as a Production Assistant for the UK tour of The Crucible.
Genevieve’s credits include The Gruffalo’s Child (CDP), HIR (Black Swan State Theatre Company), Lovely Mess (Riot Stage), Il Pagliacci (Freeze Frame Opera), 2:20AM (Red Stitch Actors Theatre), 100 Years of the History of Dance (Altitude Theatre), Yentl (Kadimah Yiddish Theatre), Rough Trade (Rogue Projects), and many more.
Personal is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, it’s arts funding and advisory body, and by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
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Acknowledgement of Country
Metro Arts acknowledge the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, as the custodians of the land we work on, recognising their connection to land, waters and community. We honour the story-telling and art-making at the heart of First Nations’ cultures, and the enrichment it gives to the lives of all Australians.
Metro Arts accepts the invitation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and supports a First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Australian Constitution.