Aubrey Mellor

☆ Save On Wikipedia ↗
Aubrey Mellor
OAM
Alma materNational Institute of Dramatic Art
Occupations
Awards

Aubrey Mellor is an Australian theatre director, dramaturge and teacher.[1]

Mellor has also worked as a writer, adapter, set designer, translator, producer, and stage manager.[2]

Early life and training

Brought up around variety and circus, Mellor trained in many fields as a young man. He graduated from a production course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney in 1969.

In 1972 Mellor was awarded a Churchill Fellowship. This experience allowed Mellor to study the traditional theatre of the East with a view to incorporating principles observed in Japan where appropriate into the Australian theatre techniques.[3]

Career

Mellor was the Artistic Director of the Jane Street Theatre, which grew out of NIDA.[4][5]

He was Co-Artistic Director of Nimrod Theatre Company in Sydney for a short time in the early 1980s.[6] He was Artistic Director of the (Royal) Queensland Theatre Company from 1988 to 1993.[7] He was also Artistic Director at Playbox (later renamed Malthouse Theatre) in Melbourne until 2004.[8]

Mellor returned to NIDA as Director in 2005, succeeding John Clark after his nearly forty years in the role. Mellor stayed at NIDA until 2007.[9] He was then Dean of the Performing Arts Schools at Lasalle in Singapore where he designed a new program bringing together the best European and Asian training.[10] He was a Senior Fellow with Lasalle until 2017.

Mellor is a visiting professor to arts colleges in Mongolia, China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and India.[11]

Awards and honours

In 2004 Mellor received an AWGIE (Australian Writers' Guild) special award known as the Dorothy Crawford Award.[12] This prize is awarded for outstanding contribution to the writing profession and industry.[13]

Mellor was the recipient of the International Theatre Institute's Uchimura Prize, for best production at the Tokyo International Festival.[14]

Mellor is listed in the Matilda Awards Hall of Fame for his contribution to the theatre industry in Queensland.[15]

Mellor was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 1992 for his service to the arts.[16]

References

  1. "Aubrey Mellor (ed)". Aurora Metro Books. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  2. "AusStage". www.ausstage.edu.au. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  3. "MELLOR, Aubrey's Fellowship Profile". Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  4. "Aubrey Mellor (ed)". Aurora Metro Books. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  5. "Old Tote Theatre Company". The Dictionary of Sydney. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  6. "See how it Runs: Nimrod and the New Wave". The Sydney Morning Herald. 29 June 2002. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  7. Hands, Karen (December 2015). "The royal New Wave: Aubrey Mellor and Queensland Theatre Company, 1988–1993". Queensland Review. 22 (2): 157–167. doi:10.1017/qre.2015.28. hdl:10072/99214. ISSN 1321-8166. S2CID 148458097.
  8. "Playbox Theatre: (author/organisation) | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  9. Lawson, Valerie (8 March 2008). "Battle over arts and minds divides NIDA". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  10. "Aubrey Mellor".
  11. "Arts Education in Asia 2017". Non | Traditional Research Outcomes. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  12. "AWGIE Special Awards 1973-2018" (PDF). Australian Writers' Guild. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 March 2019.
  13. "Full List of Winners for the 55th Annual AWGIE Awards" (PDF). Australian Writers' Guild. 2023. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2023.
  14. "Steering group". Humours of the Past. 24 May 2016. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  15. "Matilda Awards Hall of Fame".
  16. Tay, Jean; Quintos, Floy; et al. (25 January 2017). Southeast Asian Plays. Aurora Metro Publications Ltd. ISBN 978-1-910798-88-1.