18th Nov 2025 10:38AMI remember the occasion: we had been performing a lot of lunchtime slapstick-style Commedia dell'Arte shows at lunchtimes over a couple of years (under the mentorship of Associate Professor Tim Fitzpatrick from the Department of Italian Studies). In late 1983, Tim invited one of the creative producers of the Festival of Sydney to visit the campus and check out our lunchtime act. He liked it enough to give us a (poorly paid!) gig in the 1984 Festival where we performed free shows in Hyde Park. So the photo is of us rehearsing for those shows, my first ever paid theatre gig.

I am now a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies and I teach Commedia dell'Arte to my students, just as Tim Fitzpatrick taught me back in the day. In Semester One 2024, my students and I did a free outdoor show on the Isabel Fidler Lawn (near the squash courts on Manning Road) and we wore the exact same costumes, used the same masks etc.