Sinsa Mansell, proud pakana senior producer of performing arts company Performing Lines Tas, says there was beautiful synchronicity at play when it came to honouring 20 years of the Lutrawita initiative championing the work of the island state’s remarkable independent artists.
‘We already had our annual sector day booked in for the end of March, as the only organisation here bringing the performing arts sector together, from festival directors to venues, business managers to independent artists,’ Mansell reveals. ‘At the same time, the national company had been going through an exceptionally deep archival process and was stunned to stumble upon Performing Lines Tas’s original lease.’
Turns out the celebratory sector day correlated almost exactly with the anniversary of the organisation co-founded by the Tasmanian State Government and the then Australia Council for the Arts. It wasn’t the only happy coincidence.
‘The community gallery space of our HQ, the Moonah Arts Centre, had a gap in their programming, which meant we could adorn the walls with 20 years of our artwork. So our programs and operations manager, Nicole Winspear, spent a couple of months really deep-diving through archives.’
An immense task, given there was no SharePoint or Google Drive back in the day, with Winspear trawling through bulging boxes instead. It was a time-consuming but joyous process. ‘We chose particular works that we know have had a great impact with artists who were supported by Performing Lines,’ Mansell says.
The wealth of imagery was boosted by the personal collection of Annette Downs, who founded Performing Lines Tas, originally known as Tasmania Performs, alongside the organisation’s national leader and all-round legend Wendy Blacklock.
As Downs says: ‘Supporting artists was never just about producing work. It was about amplifying Tasmanian voices and stories that too often went unheard, helping those perspectives travel far beyond where they began.’
Performing Lines Tas: centring artists
Joining the organisation as an associate producer in 2022, Mansell was one of many voices Performing Lines Tas helped amplify. ‘So I truly understand the extensive targeted support, really nurturing artists throughout their career, from concepts through to delivery, as well as the performing arts ecology as a whole,’ she says.
They helped Mansell reframe her impressive achievements. ‘My entry to the performing arts was actually through the revival of cultural expression. I spent 15 years performing, which took me around the world, but it wasn’t until Performing Lines that I referred to myself as an artist.’
Mansell became the first pakana woman to co-direct, with Kate Champion, a dance work in Lutruwita, 2021’s BACK, a solo work performed by Mansell. She credits Downs as a guiding light.
‘I often refer to Annette as the four-foot giant,’ Mansell says. ‘She really offered artists meaningful, targeted entry-points into opportunities that they did not realise existed. To spaces they did not know, let alone feel confident to be able to enter them.’
A confidence Mansell thrives on building up in other artists who might not see themselves as such, nurturing their careers. People like award-winning Trawlwoolway actor, director and playwright Nathan Maynard. One of Mansell’s first jobs in her current role was supporting Maynard’s celebrated touring work, Hide The Dog, co-written with Māori creative Jamie McCaskill.
Maynard says: ‘Without Performing Lines I haven’t written a play, I haven’t directed a play … It’s as simple as that.’
Keeping artists front and centre in Performing Lines’ work is vital, Mansell insists. ‘It’s not always easy to be adaptive and responsive to the needs of the climate or the political, but the company has stayed true to its essence, which is the centrality of artists’ voices.
‘It’s about the networks that come with us. We’re putting the right people together in the right room, connecting them up to continue to feed that cultural fabric, really investing in the arts and culture across so-called Australia.’
Performing Lines Tas: taking risks
Also from Lutruwita, Performing Lines’ national CEO and executive producer Simon Wellington recognises the strength of the Tasmanian arm.
His first big gig was with Salamanca Theatre Company in the mid-90s. ‘I had no arts background, and one of the first things I had to do was help present The 7 Stages of Grieving by Wesley Enoch and Deb Mailman, which was being toured around the country by Performing Lines,’ he recalls.
‘At a that very early stage of my arts career, Performing Lines brought me into contact with this incredible piece of storytelling and cultural expression that I, and audiences in Tasmania, would never have had access to without the company.’
Wellington joined the organisation in 2024, following a stint at Hobart’s Theatre Royal.
‘Fast forward 30 years, and I end up with this opportunity to work at Performing Lines. It was a really interesting moment to go back to my wheelhouse, my safe zone, producing and working with artists, which I love, but also with that relevant perspective of how hard it is for presenters to put on work, to take the risks that we’re continually asking them to do.’
Wellington sees his role as a form of cultural brokership.
‘And it’s not only for artists to organisations, or artists to funding bodies. It’s also the other cultural institutions and bringing them together, which Performing Lines Tas has done consistently over the last two decades with that level of authority and authentic relationships across all tiers of the sector.’
Performing Lines Tas: joining the NPAPF
Just as Wellington was joining the team, Creative Australia announced that Performing Lines Tas would join the National Performing Arts Partnership Framework (NPAPF), providing an eight-year period of relative security during an industry-wide funding crisis.
‘That elevates us into a whole different league, in terms of funding stability and the kinds of networks that we’re then involved in,’ Wellington says. ‘We get invited into all these groups now, engaging in a different level of conversation.’
It’s a great recognition of the many people who have made Performing Lines the force that it is. ‘One of the very special things that Wendy Blacklock did, as the founder of the organisation, and I suspect quite intuitively, by working with amazing people like Annette Downs, is have this capacity to identify talent and know what it needs and how to support that and to nurture that to grow.’
Performing Lines will never be complacent, in Lutruwita or nationally. ‘Just because we joined the NPAPF doesn’t mean that the pot necessarily spilled over,’ Wellington notes. ‘We’ve still got a limited funding base and have to raise a lot of money to make the work that gets made.’
The industry’s unity is reassuring. ‘What’s really positive is that the organisations, presenters, producers and artists are working really well together, and with consultants who are developing a longer-term performing arts strategy for the state,’ Wellington says.
‘That will be a really important roadmap for everybody to get behind, because there needs to be more depth in the performing arts sector in Tasmania across the state. There’s only one Sinsa and Nicole.’
Mansell understands the value of the arts innately. ‘As a proud First Nations artist, I understand that culture is actually law,’ she says. ‘For the survival of the human race, arts and culture are medicine, a way of life, so we nurture the right ingredients to make that medicine powerful.’
