About The Researchers

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Denise Varney is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies. She lectures in feminist theatre, gender in performance, Brechtian theatre, theatre semiotics, and postmodern theatre as well as an inter-disciplinary study of women in the creative arts entitled Nymphs, Sluts and Madonnas..

Research profile:
Denise is co-author with Rachel Fensham of The Dolls' Revolution: Australian Theatre and Cultural Imagination (Melbourne:ASP, 2005). This new study of Australian theatre focuses on women writers who have changed our ways of seeing Australian culture. The book includes chapters on Hannie Rayson, Joanna Murray-Smith, Jenny Kemp, Katherine Thomson, with chapters on Indigenous women writers by Maryrose Casey and Beatrix Christian by Laura Ginters.

She has published 12 refereed journal articles on topics such as feminism and theatre, Australian theatre, Brechtian theatre, Contemporary German theatre and Performance documentation. She also contributes book reviews in the field. Denise completed her Ph.D in 1998. Entitled Feminism and Theatre: Theorising New Modes of Performance in Feminist Theatre, the thesis investigated the relations of history, feminism and performance, and in particular, how meaning is historicised. The thesis also theorised practice as research through its analysis of the author's own direction of two performances: Brecht's The Good Person of Sichuan (1993) and her own devised re-writing of Ibsen's The Doll's House as Doll's House with Doors (1994), both performed in The Open Stage, University of Melbourne.

In 2004, she was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant to research German theatre since re-unification which is her current project. Denise was Postgraduate Coordinator in The School of Creative Arts 2000-2005 and currently supervises in the areas of feminist performance, contemporary theatre, Australian theatre and European performance studies.

Since graduating in Creative Arts Melinda Hetzel has been pursuing her passion for directing visual and physical theatre. In 2001 she toured with the Germanic Players' production of Heiner Müller's Die Hamletmaschine to Arena Festival, Germany, returning to Arena to direct their annual co-production the following year. Supported by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Melinda was also able to complete a study tour of European theatre companies and festivals in 2002.

More recently Melinda was invited back to Erlangen as a jury member for Arena Festival 2005 and completed a six month stay in Berlin, where she continued to research German theatre since reunification.

Melinda is also artistic director of Melbourne-based theatre company, Peepshow Inc, founded 2003.

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