Michelle Hovane

We are Francis Italiano and Michelle Hovane, two of the core artists from “Sensorium” - a small team of multi-skilled theatre makers  based in Perth who  are establishing Australia’s first multi-sensory theatre company producing shows specifically designed for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities.  Sensory Theatre is a magical form of theatre as hands-on experience where the kids get to touch, taste, smell, hear and see stories unfold around them within a purpose-built sensory environment. It’s a unique way of interactive storytelling that gives kids with special needs the opportunity to get swept up in performance, puppetry, music and action in the same way all kids everywhere love to. This highly specialised work is virtually unknown in Australia, but in the UK it’s a well established field with a number of companies doing amazing work there over the last 20 years.

The project is to send Francis & Michelle to the UK, for 5 weeks at the end of this year, to work with and learn from some of the world-leaders in this inspiring medium – ‘Oily Cart Theatre’ in London, ‘Bamboozle’ Theatre in Leicester and ‘Horse & Bamboo’ in Manchester.

We first fell in love with this form of theatre after working with visiting UK sensory theatre artist Amber Onat Gregory as part of an initiative of Perth’s Barking Gecko Theatre Company in early 2010 and experiencing first-hand its power to delight and engage the audiences of kids with special needs that we presented it to. Since then, inspired and excited – and ‘sensing’ in this work a coming together of our long histories in performance and working with disadvantaged communities – we’ve kept at it, refining our understanding and fuelling our newfound passion over a series of creative development projects, forums, collaborations, performances in special needs schools, and most recently, an incredibly rich 12 week residency at Carson Street Independent special needs school that ended with us “planting “a totally touchable theatre “forest”  in the middle of the school and performing our specially created show “The Jub Jub Tree" in it. You can read back over our rewarding time with the educators, therapists, and most importantly, the kids – many of them profoundly disabled – that we worked with, on the blog we kept during that residency at Carson Street School’s website : http://carsonst.weebly.com/artists-in-residence.html

There are some great companies creating theatre for mainstream kids in Australia but currently, children with special needs are a very neglected audience here. Many of the performances available to them simply go over their heads - and the delicious experience of being transported away by a story which all children love, is denied them. We’re passionate to continue developing the Sensory Theatre form in Australia to enable children with profound and multiple learning disabilities to experience the transformative power of theatre.

That’s why, after corresponding with these highly experienced UK companies, we’ve jumped at their invitation to come and work with them on their upcoming respective new productions, get some first-hand training from them in their specific techniques and  learn from their business and management practices how they’ve kept their companies sustainable. It’s also why we’re willing to make such a personal investment to accept their invitations and get ourselves over there.

‘’Oily Cart” Theatre makes such beautiful work for special needs kids that their most highly acclaimed work, “Up in The Air” was presented for mainstream audiences at the Manchester Festival to observe. Collaborating with British aerial circus company Ockham’s Razor, they suspended disabled audience members  and their carers  metres up in the air in “pods” inspired by wheelchair hoists, with the aerial artists swinging and tumbling through the space around them...  http://www.oilycart.org.uk/    ‘Bamboozle” Theatre provide an amazing range of applications of their sensory theatre work into special needs schools environments and  specialise in training other artists & disability workers in the form and producing multiple resources for the field... http://www.bamboozletheatre.co.uk/   “Horse & Bamboo” are a highly regarded visual theatre company who also create  stunning “Guided Imagery journeys” for special needs audiences through highly stylized intricately designed sensory environments... http://www.horseandbamboo.org/gallery.html

We’re hoping that we’ll receive some government funding towards our flights to the UK,  but this is not a sure thing and we have already committed our own funds to buy the tickets. We also need help with accommodation and living expenses for the 6 weeks we’ll be there and we’re trying to raise  a minimum of $2000. It’s no secret that London is notoriously expensive...so any small or large amount you would like to contribute to support this exciting adventure will make a huge difference in achieving this largely self-funded research!!! If we exceed our target we will be able to invest in resources made by the companies we are visiting.

Hopefully the few images you've seen here give you a sense of how we work with the kids and why we want to go to London and the UK, learn as much as we can from our expert English friends, and come back ready to make more of this magical work for more of these kids. We’d love you to be part of making this happen!

Above - the four current members of the Sensorium team - clockwise from left - Michelle Hovane, Rachael Riggs, Francis Italiano and Rebecca Bradley