David Pledger works across media in theatre, dance, opera, television and media arts as a director, producer, film-maker, designer, writer, choreographer, actor and dramaturg. David has gained wide acclaim for building new artworks that combine body movement, video, sound and special effects into an organic system. He has been particularly interested in merging various genres with “media” to elevate media from the existing role as a simple form of enjoyment to a stimulant that is integrated into the structure and theme of the artwork.
Performance works such as The Austral/Asian Post-Cartoon: sports edition, Scenes of the Beginning From The End, K, Cosmonaut and Blowback sit centrally within this trajectory as do the installation projects (not) the next-door neighbours, Eavesdrop (with Jeffrey Shaw) and Walk In Drive In (with Callum Morton). The cross-over with his film projects Cosenza Vecchia and The UnMaking Of and his short films on video - desert_suburbs_city, boom, east bentleigh, fear and breath - lies in his interest in the mediation of narrative and sensibility in screen space.
David has an abiding interest in Asia and has drawn many influences from, in particular, Japan and Korea where he has researched, worked on and presented a number of projects including with Japan’s Suzuki Company of Toga (1990,1991), the Korean National University of Arts (Agamemnon 1994, www.shakespeare.kr 1997) the Japanese contemporary dance company Gekidan Kaitaisha for the Journey To Confusion Series (1999-2002 and the Dolgoogi theatre/Seoul Performing Arts Festival for the bi-lingual coproduction of K (2005).
In Europe, he has been involved in numerous research, workshop and exchange projects hosted and supported by the Moscow Centre for Research Into Human Movement (Russia, 1991); Iberia Films (Ukraine, Georgia, 1991); La Fabriks, AFAA (France 1991,1993); Saarbrucken Festival (1991); the Internazionale Laboratorio di Teatro (Italy, 1990, 1991), the Sydney Theatre Company / Comedie Francaise Writers’ Exchange (1995) and the Centre for Media and Art in Germany, ZKM (2002). His work has been presented in many locations in Australia and internationally including the central Australian deserts, Tokyo’s Morishita Studio, the Australian Pavilion at Expo in Hanover, in the rehearsal room of the Schiller Theatre in Berlin, at the National Theatre of Korea, the Maroondah Art Gallery, at Melbourne’s La Mama Theatre, in an abandoned stables, an arcade, a car-park, an Army and Navy Club, at the Hawaiian International Film Festival, on the streets of Arhus, Denmark; the Vibafilm Movie Studios in Ljubljana, Slovenia and in the Museums Quartier for the Vienna Festival and in numerous art and performance journals.
In 2005 his writing was recognised by the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for Blowback, which was short-listed for the Louis Esson Prize for Drama and the Australian Writers Guild for Eavesdrop for New Media Writing. His design and direction have received more than a dozen nominations in theatre, dance and opera from the Victorian Green Room Awards. He is the recipient of the Sydney Myer Performing Arts Award and the Kenneth Myer Performing Arts Medal and fellowships from the Churchill Memorial Trust and the Australia-Korea Foundation.
He splits his time working between Australia and overseas, and has taken a number of short-term positions including Visiting Professor at the Korean National University of Arts (1994, 1997), Workshop Leader at the International TeaterTreffen of the Berlin Theatre Festival (1995,1999), and Artist-in-Residence at the Centre for Media and Art (ZKM) in Germany (2002).
He is the founding artistic director and producer of not yet it’s difficult (nyid). Formed in 1995, nyid is one of Australia’s leading contemporary arts companies producing original performance works, public space projects, play productions, installations, experimental video and television.
