Robyn Archer

Robyn Archer, AO, CdOAL (born 1948) is an Australian singer, writer, stage director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.

Biography

Archer was born Robyn Smith in Prospect, South Australia. She began singing at the age of four years and singing professionally from the age of 12 years, everything from folk and pop and graduating to blues, rock, jazz and cabaret. She graduated from the University of Adelaide and immediately took up a full-time singing career. Archer has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours English) and Diploma of Education from the University of Adelaide.

Archer is gay.

Robyn Archer has been the subject of several pieces now housed in the Australian National Portrait Gallery, in particular an oil painting by George Gittoes was donated to the collection in 2012.

Performance

In 1974 Archer sang Annie I in the Australian premiere of Brecht/Weill's '' The Seven Deadly Sins'' to open The Space of the Adelaide Festival Centre. She subsequently played Jenny in Kurt Weill's '' Threepenny Opera'' for New Opera South Australia where she met English translator and editor John Willett. Since then her name has been linked particularly with the German cabaret songs of Weill, Eisler, and Paul Dessau and others from the Weimar Republic, a repertoire which Willett guided her to.

Her one-woman cabaret ''A Star is Torn'' (1979) covering various female singers including Billie Holiday and her 1981 show '' The Pack of Women'' both became successful books and recordings, the latter also being produced for television in 1986. She played ''A Star is Torn'' throughout Australia from 1979 to 1983, and for a year at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End.

Archer has continued to sing a wide-ranging repertoire and in 2008/2009 gave a series of concerts including ''iprotest!'' (with Paul Grabowsky) and separate German and French concerts with Michael Morley. All were sell-outs and critically acclaimed.

Robyn has written and devised many works for the stage from ''The Conquest of Carmen Miranda'' to ''Songs From Sideshow Alley'' and ''Cafe Fledermaus'' (directed by Barrie Kosky to open the Merlyn Theatre at the Malthouse in Melbourne). In 1989 she was commissioned to write a new opera, ''Mambo'', for the Nexus Opera, London. In 2008 her play ''Architektin'' premiered in Adelaide and in 2009 she devised the ''Tough Nut Cabaret'' for a production in Pittsburgh, USA.

Festival director and public speaker

Robyn Archer is also a director of arts festivals in Australia and overseas. Her career took this turn accidentally, with an invitation while she was performing her show ''Le Chat Noir'' in Canberra to direct the National Festival of Australian Theatre which was hosted by the national capital. She directed the 1993, 1994 and 1995 editions and this began a string of Artistic Director positions at the Adelaide Festival of Arts (1998 and 2000), the Melbourne International Arts Festival (2002–2004). She created Ten Days on the Island, an international arts festival for Tasmania, spent two years as Artistic Director of the European Capital of Culture, and advised on the start-up of Luminato in Toronto. In 2007 she created The Light in Winter for Federation Square in Melbourne and in July 2009 was appointed Creative Director of the Centenary of Canberra 2013.

She is in frequent demand as a speaker and public advocate of the arts all over the world, and her Wal Cherry and Manning Clark Memorial Lectures in 2008/2009 have increased that status. She was a commentator at the inaugural broadcast Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for the ABC, Australia. She has been a television guest on '' The Michael Parkinson Show'', ''Clive James

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