AustLit

'Melbourne Workers Theatre (MWT) is a political theatre company that has been creating new performance works in Melbourne, Australia. MWT makes work that articulates flaws in the mainstream perception of Australian culture and identity, contesting how Australians think about themselves as a nation and as a people. The company explores the fissures and cracks of Australian society in order to appeal to the sociological imagination of the audience through compelling, intelligent and beautifully realised performance events.

Patricia Cornelius, Steve Payne and Michael White formed MWT in 1987 in a climate of aggression towards trade unions, which affected workers and their families throughout the world. Their aim was to address the question "What does it mean to be a trade unionist at this particular time under these particular attacks?" The original home of MWT was a transportable shed at the Jolimont railway workshop in the heart of Melbourne. The first years saw the company embedded within the union movement, creating performance works about workers and performing them in work-places. Over the next few years the company moved out of the railway yards and into theatre spaces, forging a reputation as a centre of artistic innovation and excellence, creating landmark theatre productions that set the standard for political theatre in this country and at the same time establishing the careers of many of Australia' most significant writers, actors and directors.

Since inception MWT has sought to address the monotonous cultural hegemony of theatre in Melbourne and Australia by actively seeking out artists from a diversity of cultural backgrounds for every project, to incorporate different languages, songs and cultural footprints on stage.' Source: http://melbourneworkerstheatre.com.au/ (Sighted 26/02/2009).