Absolutely could not be more delighted than to be presenting for your excellent attention Tariro Mavondo as our feature this week. Tariro stands out as one Australia's most magnetic-dynamic performers in poetry and theatre, mixing words and movement with so much passion and originality. If you've never seen her perform before... where on earth have you been?! And if you have, then you know what a true treat this is.
Plus as always our eclectic open mic for youse, yes youse.
MC this week is Steve Smart. When Smarty is not on stage hosting you can find him at the bar asking hopefully 'Is there stout on tap this week?'
BIO
Tariro’s poetry is somatic, an eruptive invitation to enlist oneself to presence as the passageway into experiencing the sensorium of human and non human kinship. Tariro is the essence of an artist, her life work which includes creative workshop facilitation and executive arts leadership is tethered to re-villagising, unifying through difference and remaking a post humanist world by staying with the trouble.
Nominated for an Aria Music Award in 2021 with her collaboration with The Australian Art Orchestra for Best Jazz Album last year and won an APRA AMCOS award for Work of the Year: Electroacoustic/Sound Art, for Closed Beginnings.
Tariro has been a featured poet at Slamalamadingdong, Better Of Said, Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival, Passionate Tongue, Mother Tongue, Emerging Writers Festival, African Music and Cultural Festival, Melbourne Poets Union. She has been published in Growing Up African in Australia Black Inc Books and Going Down Swinging.
A natural born trailblazer and advocate for cultural equity in policy, purpose and practice ,Tariro founded Africa’s Got Talent Australia and was a co-founding member of Centre for Poetics and Justice and Still Waters; African Storytelling Collective.
Between 2019-2021, Tariro became co-Artistic Director/CEO at Western Edge, a thriving community of next generation artistic and cultural leaders, born from Melbourne’s West at the new frontier of contemporary Australia. At Western Edge Tariro was able to utilize her multidisciplinary skills as an embodied executive leader, systems thinking strategist, director, mentor, facilitator, trainer, speaker, activist, consultant and advisor across community, government, philanthropic foundations arts and education sectors.
Tariro is an internationally award winning actress and voice over artist who has worked with Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Black Swan, Street Theatre in Canberra, Belvoir, Bell Shakespeare, Thomas The Tank Engine, PwC, BMW, AFLW , La Trobe University, DFO, Lexus, Engineers Australia etc.
Towards the end of 2021 Tariro left her dream job to get lost in tropical jungles around the world for a year and co-mingle with wild natural territories and re-member the vernaculars and ontologies of soils, rivers, waterfalls, frogs, birds, tree branches, ocean, plants, flowers, skies.
After living in Barbados, an island in the Caribbean for a year. Tariro returned to Australia to co-direct Maxine Beneba Clarke’s theatrical production of The Hate Race which premiered at Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne in 2024 and was the associate director of Outer Urban Project’s production ‘The Audition’ which had a season at La Mama Theatre and toured at Bunjil Place and The Bowery Theatre. After nearly five years away from the stage as an actor Tariro was an actor in La Belle Epoque a Black Australian love story of a Congolese man reconciling his present life in Australia with his heritage in the heart of Africa where its children are exploited in the West's scramble for the DRC's natural resources and minerals premiering at Theatreworks.
COST: Free
ACCESSIBILITY: Step up to access to venue. Staff can assist with entry for wheelchair users. Toilets may be too narrow for wheelchair access.