Tobias Alexander Edward Manderson-Galvin (born 19 August 1984) is an Australian
actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
,
satirist,
performance poet
Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe ...
, and
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
. He is co founder and CEO/Artistic Director of
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
's new writing theatre:
MKA: Theatre of New Writing. and UK/Aus company Doppelgangster.
Summary
Manderson-Galvin's distinctive
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
runs the gamut from
docu-drama
Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television show, television and feature film, film, which features Drama (film and television), dramatized Historical reenactment, re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of docum ...
to
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
,
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
to
hyper-realism
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily app ...
making him a notable Australian theatre maker. He's also distinguished by his increasingly large body of work. Manderson-Galvin writes and appears in much of his theatre also directing the majority of it. For inspiration, Manderson-Galvin draws heavily on his training as a
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
dancer,
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
,
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
, and his Jewish and Irish heritage. He's performed on stages diverse as the
Melbourne Theatre Company, Kings Cross Theatre, a carpark, and an old tip.
His writing has appeared in academic publications, poetry anthologies, and briefly for Daily Review.
Public Controversies
On Melbourne Cup Day, 2023, when at a Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses 'Nup to the Cup' event Manderson-Galvin performed a poem that called for racegoers to be murdered. According to The Age Newspaper this attracted a police investigation. Manderson-Galvin stated the poem was satirical and was disbelieving that any one could have thought otherwise.
In December 2011 Manderson-Galvin's stage-thriller 'The Economist' - a play responding to the
2011 Norway attacks
The 2011 Norway attacks, referred to in Norway as 22 July ( no, 22. juli) or as 22/7, were two domestic terrorist attacks by neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF) ...
- generated controversy in Australia when Manderson-Galvin repeated to media that the killer had cited former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello in his manifesto. Writing for the Age critic John Bailey challenged the reactionary reporting noting that comments like ''sent shockwaves across the globe'' and''critics have savaged'' had been reported before the production had even opened.
Selected stage works
*Everybody Loses(2017-19), Writer/Deviser, Doppelgangster, Aberystwyth Arts Centre (Wales), La Générale (Paris), Vault Festival (London), Performance Lab (Sheffield), Tom Thumb (Margate), Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), The Projector (Singapore), Backbone Arts (Brisbane), MKA Theatre (Melbourne), Kings Cross Theatre (Sydney), Apparat Athen (Athens)
*A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Disney (2016), Director/Performer, MKA: Theatre of New Writing, Provocare Festival
*Doppelgangster's TITANIC (2015–16), co-writer + performer, Doppelgangster, (Cardiff, Experimentica; Paris, ArtCOP21; Aberystwyth, Site2Safle2 Festival; Melbourne, Hot!Hot!Hot! Festival)
*Lucky (2015), Playwright, MKA: Theatre of New Writing in association with Melbourne Theatre Company's NEON Festival
*Please Don't Talk About Me When Im Gone (2015), Playwright, MKA: Theatre of New Writing + Les Foules, VAULT Festival (Winner, Outstanding New Production, Vault Awards)
*Thank You, Thank You Love (2014), Playwright, Director, Performer, MKA: Theatre of New Writing + HYPRTXT Festival
*The Economist (2011), Playwright, MKA: Theatre of New Writing
*Dogmeat (2010)+(2014), Playwright + Performer, MKA: Theatre of New Writing
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manderson-Galvin, Tobias
1984 births
Australian people of Irish descent
Male actors from Canberra
Male actors from Melbourne
Living people