Jane harrison biography

PERSONAL:

Born , in Victoria, Australia.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Melbourne, Australia.

CAREER:

Formerly worked as an advertising copywriter; Ilbijerri Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Theatre Cooperative, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, playwright, —; Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia, teacher of cultural studies to indigenous performing arts students.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Kate Challis RAKA Award (co-winner), , for Stolen.

WRITINGS:

Stolen (play; first produced in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, at Playbox Theatre, ), Currency Press (Sydney, Australia)/Playbox Theatre Centre (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia),

Rainbow's End (play; also known as Rumbalara), produced at Melbourne Museum Sidney Myer Amphitheatre,

(Adapter) Walkabout (musical play), produced in Australia by Chamber Made,

Contributor to Many Voices, Reflections on Experiences of Indigenous Child Separation, National Library, (Canberra, Australia),

SIDELIGHTS:

Australian playwright Jane Harrison is a descendent of the Muruwari people, and her Aboriginal heritage is reflected in much of her writing. Harrison was raised in the Victorian Dandenogs, then went on to become an advertising copywriter in Melbourne. When she was laid off, however, she answered an advertisement for the Ilbijerri Theatre Company, which was looking for writers but did not require applicants to have experience writing plays. She looked at it as an opportunity not just to branch out into a new creative form, but as a chance to incorporate her heritage into her work. Through her writing for the Ilbijerri, she considers herself a member of the indigenous community. In an interview for , Harrison remarked: "The whole issue of identity, it's what I feel when I'm with my people. It's a strong sense of belonging that is kind of deep. I get very fired up about issues. I'm not a terribly political person but I feel a very strong emotional connection to those issues. I want to do my

A descendant of the Muruwari people (Bourke and Brewarrina area), Jane Harrison is a playwright, critic, and novelist. Raised by her mother (alongside a sister) in the Victorian Dandenongs, she worked first as a copywriter for advertising agencies before she was commissioned by Ilbijerri Theatre Company to write the play Stolen. The play was included in the VCE English and NSW HSC syllabi and awarded the Kate Challis RAKA Award in It remains her best-known and most-toured play.

Harrison followed Stolen with a succession of plays about Australian Aboriginal experiences, including Walkabout, Rainbow's End, Blakvelvet, Custody, and First Contact, which was directed by Leah Purcell under the title The Visitors. Harrison's plays are widely performed, studied, and awarded: Rainbow's End () was included in the NSW HSC syllabus between and , Blakvelvet won the Theatrelab Indigenous Award in , and Custody won the Holmes à Court Indigenous Award in

Harrison made her debut as a novelist in with Becoming Kirrali Lewis (which, in manuscript form, won a Kuril Dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship), a coming-of-age story of an Aboriginal teenager growing up in the s and coming to an understanding of her parents' life among the turbulent activism of the s.

Harrison also holds a Master of Arts degree from the Queensland University of Technology, for a thesis that examined 'the challenges for non Aboriginal theatre practitioners in accessing and interpreting Aboriginal themes'.

Indigenous Australian playwright and writer

Jane Harrison is an Aboriginal Australian playwright, novelist, literary festival director, and researcher. Her best-known work is the play Stolen, which received critical claim and has toured nationally and internationally since

Early life and education

Harrison is a descendant of the Muruwari people of New South Wales, from the area around Bourke and Brewarrina.

She grew up in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria with her mother and sister, and began her career as an advertising copywriter.

Plays

Stolen

Main article: Stolen (play)

Stolen premièred in at Playbox (now Malthouse Theatre) Melbourne directed by Wesley Enoch followed by seven annual seasons in Melbourne, plus tours to Sydney, Adelaide, regional Victoria, Tasmania, the United Kingdom (twice), Hong Kong and Tokyo, with readings in Canada, New York City and Los Angeles. In Sydney, it was performed at the Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Wayne Blair. Stolen is a play about the lives of five First Nations people from the stolen generations. For Stolen Harrison was awarded the Australian Writers' GuildAWGIE Nomination, was co-winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award, and received an Honourable Mention in the CACS National Awards Individual Category for An Outstanding Contribution to Australian Culture. Stolen has been studied on the Victorian Certificate of Education and New South Wales Higher School Certificate English and drama syllabi for some years - it is the vehicle through which a generation of young people have learned about the stolen generations of First Nations children. Australian Book Review writes "Stolen is a contemporary classic".

Sydney Theatre Company staged a new production of Stolen in its season, directed by Ian Michael.

Rainbow's End

Rainbow's End premièred in , and toured Melbourne, Sydney, region

British classical scholar, linguist and feminist (–)

For other people named Jane Harrison, see Jane Harrison (disambiguation).

Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September – 15 April ) was a British classical scholar and linguist. With Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, Harrison is one of the founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. She has also been credited with being the first woman to obtain a post in England as a 'career academic'. Harrison argued for women's suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself.Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, later second wife of Sir Francis Darwin, was Jane Harrison's best friend from her student days at Newnham, and during the period from to Ellen's death in

Life and career

Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire on 9 September to Charles and Elizabeth Harrison. Her mother died of puerperal fever shortly after she was born and she was educated by a series of governesses. Her governesses taught her German, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew, but she later expanded her knowledge to about sixteen languages, including Russian.

Harrison spent most of her professional life at Newnham College, the progressive, recently established college for women at Cambridge. Mary Beard described Harrison as "the first woman in England to become an academic, in the fully professional sense – an ambitious, full-time, salaried, university researcher and lecturer".

Between and , Harrison studied Greek art and archaeology at the British Museum under Sir Charles Newton. Harrison then supported herself lecturing at the museum and at schools (mostly private boy's schools). Her lectures became widely popular and 1, people ended up attending her Glasgow lecture on Athenian