Rachel Perks

Hello wonderful people,
We (Rachel and Bridget) are making a show called GROUND CONTROL and it's been selected to appear in the Next Wave Festival 2016 (Wooo!)

GROUND CONTROL is:
 A story about a woman called Chris who's on an interstellar mission to find Earth 2.0.
A queer feminist sci fi about long distance relationships, cyborgs and violence.
A shot at placing women at the centre of the narrative of our future.


Created in response to the writings of Chris Kraus, Donna Haraway and real events of gendered violence, the work is a deeply cyberfeminist exploration of our potential future, the technological singularity and the silencing of women's voices. 
We have some amazing artists attached to the project and all of the ideas in the multiverse, but we have not been able, in this impossible financial climate, to secure enough funding. The money we are hoping to raise will cover the bare minimum (set, cossies etc) and the rest we will be personally covering with love, determination and a lot of called in favours.



Rachel is writing the project and will be one of the performers, Bridget will be directing it and we have many other incredible people on board including Emma Hall, Kai Bradley, Emily Tomlins, Amelia Lever-Davidson, Matt Adey, Marcel Dorney, Zoe Rouse, Daniel Schlusser, Mark Pritchard and Tonie-Rayne Steele. I know right? Dream team!

We have some amazing feminist Sci Fi themed prizes because we think you should be getting something you can love in return for your money, (the whole craft swag pictured below) so if you can, please help us out through donating or sharing the page. We hope to see you at the show, dates and venue to be announced at the Next wave launch on March 15th when all will be revealed!



(All show/promotion images taken by none other than Sarah Walker.)

So far we have secured spaces to rehearse through our wonderful venue (TBA) and a residency at the Women's Circus, we are also receiving incredible administrative and technical support from both the venue and from the Next Wave Festival.



However, even with all this help there are still some very important costs we need to cover - first and foremost paying our talented team! These people are stepping up and lending us their brilliant minds and bodies along with their time and energy. They are working to bring this project to life. And we want to pay them something! It's nothing in comparison to the time and sweat and genius they are contributing but it makes it slightly easier.



Over 50% of the funds we raise here will go directly to our artists. The remaining funds will go towards our set design and materials, insurance (in case we fall off a ladder), video design/projections AND getting Bridget from New York to Melbourne.
A small percentage will also go toward pozible fees as they make this campaign possible.

Our primary challenge with this work is its politics. As much as feminism has come a long way in popularity and exposure in the past five years, there are still many conversations that are uncomfortable, raw and taboo. These are the conversations we want to have. We want to speak about the systematic erasure of women's voices, about the catastrophically unreported incidence of violence against women, about which women DO get to speak and which ones don't. 
The content is challenging but the conversation is urgent and important.

Other more tangible challenges include: 
Collaborating internationally (aka over Skype). It's been a tricky process for Rachel and Bridget, however not one they aren't used to. As Bridget has been on board from the shows conception it is vital that she continue to create it with Rachel which essentially means flying her over from New York, a challenge that comes at a hefty price!
Staging Sci Fi is also tricky at the best of times and even more so with few funds, however our designers have come up with  some genius solves to give us high production values within the modest budget we have available.