Samoan Australian Lisa Fa’alafi is a multidimensional artist and teine toa living and working on Yuggera and Turrbal country. With 20 years experience as a performer, designer, dramaturg and director. The heart of her process makes space for indigenised feminine processes, pushing cultural and gender boundaries as well as Decolonising western theatrical spaces. Her work is visually stunning, highly entertaining, conceptual, political and uses theatre as an instrument to create change. Lisa is Co-Director of artist collective Polytoxic who have created platforms and landmark intersectional works recently commissioned by Brisbane Festival for two large scale works; Snapshot multimedia arial work 2020 and Matilda award nominated feminist work Demolition 2021. As an independent maker, Lisa’s work combines her ethos with a unique style of cultural analysis, experimentation with form and eye for design. From theatre direction and choreography, costume and set design, immersive interactive design and performance as well as her work as a speaker on diversity and intersectional feminism in theatre, Lisa has worked with numerous renowned artists and companies, including Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub (APT GOMA), ATUA (National Gallery of Australia), Nick Cave: The Heard (GOMA), The Guilty Feminist, Babushka, Circa, The Art Engineers, Don’t Speak UK, The Treasury London, Bech and Phluxus2 Dance Collective. Her work has been seen at Sydney Festival, festivals in Noumea and Vanuatu, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, Las Vegas Burlesque Hall of Fame, Dublin Fringe, Planet IndigenUs Canada and PS122’s COIL Festival NYC. Lisa is the Co-creator, Writer, Director, Designer, Choreographer and Performer for the international smash hit Hot Brown Honey, performing across six countries, the work has receiving massive popular and critical acclaim, winning the prestigious 2016 UK Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation and Playing with Form, 2016 Greenroom Awards for Best Production and Best Design, 2017 Helpmann Award for Best Cabaret Performer and 2018 Nominee for Best Touring Production for the UK Theatre Awards. Lisa continues to grow a cohort of incredible BIPOC creatives through the Hive City Legacy Project which first premiered a London show at Roundhouse 2018, touring 2019 and 2022 will see the creation of a new HCL show with Dublin Fringe Festival who have commissioned a new Irish hive. Today she is sought out for her skills as a director, dramaturg, mentor and is working with POC artists across Australia, the UK and Canada.
