Ian Pidd is a Melbourne based freelance director of theatre and festivals. Ian works in a variety of contexts, but has a particular interest in creating works that are highly participatory and which feature professional and vernacular artists working side by side.
His theatre credits include his four year Artistic Directorship of Back To Back Theatre and ten years directing the majority of works at Snuff Puppets, where his productions travelled throughout the world. Ian has directed for The Business, MRPG, Barry Morgan, Polyglot Theatre and many others. Ian’s production of Men Of Steel’s Hard Rubbish was a popular and critical hit for The Malthouse in late 2013.
Ian is Artistic Director of the music and arts festival The Lost Land, a highly participatory event that sees bands such as Baker Boy, The Waifs and Sampa The Great appear alongside Circus Oz, Gravity and Other Myths and Team Textiles - however the highlights are participatory works such as The Big Lost Band in which 150 kids and their parents make a joyful mess of classic rock songs. Ian also been AD of festivals as diverse as Moomba and The Works (Glenorchy, Tas) and was for 6 years the Chair of Melbourne Fringe. For ten years he was co-artistic director of boutique festival The Village and was founding Artistic Director of Junction Arts Festival (JAF) in Launceston. For the last 8 years he has curated the Village program of performance, visual art, workshops, music and participatory works at all three Falls music festivals in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.
Ian has an ongoing relationship with the creative community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where he has directed a series of large outdoor theatre works, as well has hosting a number of Indonesian artists on projects in Australia. Ian directed Polish and Philadelphia based casts in iterations of Polyglot Theatre’s Ants in Europe and the US and was one of the key artists in Dookie Unearthed (Regional Arts Victoria’s Small Town Transformations) where children and townspeople came together to create a multi-layered event across the whole town.
Ian was Director of First On The Ladder, Polyglot Theatre’s four year art-meets-sport project with Rumbalara Football Netball club on Yorta Yorta land in Shepparton, and The Moree Boomerangs on Kamileroi land.
Ian collaborates with Bec Reid and Kate Macdonald on a series of social dance projects under the banner of Every Body Now. Their participatory social dance works - Innaugural Annual Dance Affair, Yes We Dance (Commissioned for the 2018 Commonwealth Games), You Should Be Dancing - have been in multiple iterations throughout the country. They have two significant works in the commissioning stage: RINK (a rock musical based on Roller Derby culture) has recently been awarded seed funding from Brisbane Festival in conjunction with HOTA) and Krystal Court, which is a situationist work with grandparents and their grandchildren, which is likely to be seen on the the Gold Coast in 2020 (virus willing!)
Ian made Passenger, a theatre work for bus and urban landscape with Jessica Wilson and Nicola Gunn in 2017. The work had a celebrated season in Melbourne in 2017, and has since been seen at London’s Greenwich and Docklands Festival in 2019, and at Sydney’s Art and About in 2020. Passenger is likely to be seen twice in 2020. Virus willing.
Ian directed Sam Halmerik and JOF’s We Are Lightening, which opened at Melbourne’s Arts House in 2017 and since then he has directed 4 seasons in the UK and Ireland. The show has picked-up a Green Room nomination and a Dublin Fringe Judges Choice award along the way.
Ian has sat on the boards of Back To Back, Snuff Puppets, Arts Access, ASIALINK performing arts board, The Village Inc, Junction Arts Festival, Melbourne Fringe (Chair), as well as five year stint on the City Of Melbourne’s Culture And Arts Advisory Board. He is currently Chair of Elbow Room in Melbourne and sits on the Green Room panel. He has sat on funding panels for the Australia Council, Arts Victoria (now Creative Victoria), City Of Melbourne, Regional Arts Victoria and Arts Tasmania.