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Company Members
Canberra Playback Theatre company members are from various backgrounds. Theatre practitioners, musicians and community members. They all share a love of stories, theatre, music, community participation and above all a passion for Playback Theatre.
Robin Davidson
Robin Davidson is an actor, clown, director and writer. He is a graduate of Charles Sturt University in Theatre/Media. He is a founding member of Canberra Playback Theatre and has been a playback theatre trainer in Canberra, Hobart, and Tamworth. He devises theatre with communities, including five years as artistic director of Hidden Corners Theatre, a company for young carers (young people who have a family member with a disability) and four years as director of Imperfectly Sane Productions, the Mental Health Foundation of the ACTs theatre company. He was co-awarded the 2005 Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance ACT Green Room Award for services to community theatre. He also performs, directs and teaches clown and Commedia dellArte, including having performed in Nara Japan and at the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games. He is sometimes seen as an unusually large bogong moth.
Tanisha Jowsey
Tanisha Jowsey has been involved in drama and acting since she was a small fry. She discovered the Canberra playback Theatre company and joined as a member in March 2007. During her time in the company Tanisha has been a player in both corporate and public performances and has also directed the company in rehearsals and led introductory workshops from time to time. Prior to joining the company Tanisha was heavily involved in theatre sports with the Scared Scriptless Company in Christchurch as well as theatre script writing, stage acting, and television and film acting in New Zealand. She trained at Rosie Belton's Christchurch Drama School from 1995-1998 and won several awards at national drama competitions, including the YFC Best Monologue in 1998. Tanisha completed university degrees in Greek classical studies as well as anthropology, where she focused and mythology, narrative and discourse; which basically means she likes stories and knows a bit about them. Tanisha now works at the Australian National University, writing up people's stories of illness. In her spare time she's an artist dabbling in all things arty, cooking exotic foods and hanging out with one seriously groovy beagle called Sherlock Cornelius James.
Susan O'Reilly
Susan joined the company in 2009 and continues to enjoy the challenges and thrills of this exciting artform. Susan's favourite playback moments are the bond between the players, the trust given by the audience and the thrill when you create an amazing performance from someone's equally amazing story.
Ian Wood
Ian has a rather checkered history. After an apparently promising academic beginning in mathematics, he made an abrupt about turn into a more bohemian lifestyle and ended up a practising musician in Prague. There he was an active part of the alternative music scene throughout the 90's. After numerous misadventures, including a chance meeting with a bull killer whale in the middle of the Atlantic, Buto dance theatre with the famed Sumako Koseki and a visit to the twin towers a month before their demise, Ian has found himself back in academic circles doing a PhD modelling social processes. Playback theatre tickles much of Ian’s extra-academic needs, providing a creative outlet for his musical and theatrical inclinations and deep satisfaction from the profound connections Playback tends to create!
Theresia Citraningtyas
Theresia Citraningtyas - known as "Citra" (used like an Australian first name) is a GP from Indonesia who has been involved in theatre and music for many years. She began exploring performing arts for therapy ever since she performed at a hospital children's ward when she first learned to speak and sing. Since then she has been involved in various productions and won several oratory awards. She has played as Peter Pan, performed at national poetry orations, sang in choirs and solo, and has also scripted and produced several theatrical performances, including for World Vision Indonesia's Tuberculosis eradication program. She has explored different forms of theatre, both scripted and unscripted, such as Theatresports and Psychodrama, until she landed in Canberra Playback Theatre. As a GP she worked at a crisis centre for women and children survivors of violence in Jakarta and was a key contributor to the Department of Health of Indonesia's national training module for prevention and treatment of violence against women, which uses role-play and various means to enhance gender sensitivity and counselling skills among health professionals across Indonesia. She has worked as medical educator at the Rural Health Education Foundation, where she developed medical educational programs for satellite television. She has also lectured in psychology and in medicine and is also a medical translator/interpreter. She is currently writing her PhD thesis in psychological medicine at the Australian National University on how people deal with disasters, particularly the 2003 Canberra bushfire and the 2004 tsunami in Aceh. The process is similar to Playback: listening to stories wholeheartedly, and representing them truthfully in a way that is most meaningful to the teller and the audience. When she gets the chance, she loves travelling to enjoy nature and culture with her fellow academic husband and their two energetic boys.