AustLit

Visual artist and author Sue McPherson was born in Sydney to an Aboriginal mother from Wiradjuri country and a Torres Strait Islander father. She was a Ward of the State for a number of years before been adopted into the McPherson family, land owners from the Batlow area in southern New South Wales. After leaving school McPherson worked in various jobs before moving to Wagga Wagga, New South Wales where she worked with the Regional Aboriginal Land Council. Later she gained her Bachelor of Teaching from Charles Sturt University, and worked as a teacher at the Riverina Institute of TAFE.

McPherson’s inspiration to write came from her sons; this prompted her to take up a writing workshop advertised in the local paper in Coolum, Queensland. Subsequently, she began writing her first novel Grace Beside Me (2012), which she entered the first manuscript in the Black& Write! Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writing Fellowship and was a joint winner in 2011. And, in 2013 it was shortlisted in the Young Adult category of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; McPherson was the only first time novelist on the shortlist. Her novel also gained recognition by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany and was listed on the White Raven’s list for 2013. (A list of books that are deemed to deserve worldwide attention because of their universal themes and/or, their exceptional and innovative artistic and literary style and design). McPherson continues to live on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane. (Brisbane Writers Festival; Magabala Books website; Queensland Government website; State Library of Queensland website; The Gallery Eumundi website)

After graduating from the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia, Kodie Bedford moved to Sydney to work as a journalist. She worked for SBS's Living Black before joining the ABC's Message Stick. When Message Stick was cancelled, she moved to the ABC Indigenous Department. After deciding she wanted to break into script-writing, she joined MediaRING, a volunteer association of industry and screen organisations with a focus on creating opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working in the media.

Her first film script, Yarrabah, was funded by Screen Australia in 2017. She also served as script and story editor on Grace Beside Me.

Sources:

'Showcase on Indigenous talent – Kodie Bedford'. MediaRING, 4 May 2016. http://www.mediaring.com.au/news/showcase-on-indigenous-talent-kodie-bedford/

Kate Howarde was an actor, director, dramatist, entrepreneur.

Arguably the leading Australian-based female thespian/writer/entrepreneur of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Kate Howarde carved out a distinguished stage career over more than forty years, producing drama, musical comedies, pantomime, revusicals, and film. As a result of this remarkable activity, she also provided opportunities for a number of practitioners who later went on to establish their own high-profile careers, notably S. A. Fitzgerald, Bert Bailey, and Charles Villiers. As a writer, her best-known original stage works are Possum Paddock (1919) and Gum Tree Gully (1924).

DETAILED BIOGRAPHY

1864-1899: Born in North Woolwich, London, to labourer Edward George Jones and Harriett Hannah (nee Payne), Kate Howarde began her association with the Antipodes as a child, when her family immigrated to New Zealand. Although Howarde has claimed that she began receiving payment for her contributions to the Wellington Post at age nine after being encouraged to write by the paper's editor, this is believed to have occurred later in her teens (see note below). In 1884, she married musician William Henry de Saxe and that same year gave birth to their daughter, Florence. One of the first plays she wrote is said to have been When the Tide Rises. Although no premiere production has been located to date, Howarde is known to have staged it as late as 1925 (Theatre Royal, Brisbane, beginning 7 November). Another early work claimed by Howarde is Under the Southern Cross.

Howarde made her Australian debut on 3 April 1886, aged 22, with Bella Sutherland's Vital Spark Combination (Sydney Morning Herald 3 April 1886, p.2). This first appearance saw her cast as Wilhemina in a mini-musical comedy, The Rival Lovers, and as Julia in the farce Turn Him Out. She also performed an original local song, 'Tricky,' in the olio section of the programme. The following week, she played Ko Ket (the man catcher) in The Happy Man, performed the song and dance 'Some Girls Do,' and appeared as Mrs Pettibone in the farce A Kiss in the Dark (Sydney Morning Herald 10 April 1886, p.2). A few weeks later Howarde undertook an engagement with Pollock and Cunard, then sub-lessees under F. E. Hiscocks at Sydney's Academy of Music. Her appearance during the week beginning 15 May included a role in the farce Love, Divorce and Poison (as Mrs Littlejoy) opposite Alf Lawton and Add Ryman.

It is not yet clear when Howarde founded her own theatrical company. Although she reportedly did this soon after arriving in Australia, no dates or locations have yet been identified. Her engagement with the Willard-Sheridan English Company in 1889 and headline billing with W. R. Cowan's Dramatic Company at Brisbane's Gaiety Theatre in early 1890 certainly indicate that she had established a considerable reputation in the country within a short period of time. It suggests, however, that if she had formed her own dramatic troupe, it had not yet become a permanent venture. Howarde's association with John F. Sheridan and Pemberton Willard, which included a season at the Gaiety Theatre, Sydney ca. June-July 1889, also saw her appear alongside her sister Miss M. Howarde (aka Billie).

1900- 1909: The Kate Howarde Company toured Australia and New Zealand constantly up until around 1905. Although primarily a dramatic troupe, the company nevertheless occasionally staged pantomimes and burlesques, including Sinbad the Sailor (ca. 1897), Little Jack Sheppard, Aladdin Up-to-Date, and Diavolo Up-to-Date (all ca. 1898), along with vaudeville (including minstrel entertainment) and various operatic genres: operetta, opera bouffe, and comic opera. Among the more prominent troupe members engaged during this period were actors John 'Jack' Cosgrove and Albert Luca, along with Sam Gale.

Sometime around 1905, Howarde and Scottish comedian Elton Black, who later became her second husband, travelled to the United States in order to explore the opportunities available to them in that country's vaudeville and theatrical industries. While she was away, the company continued to tour under the management of her sister Billie, Billie's husband Harry Craig, and two brothers, Louis and Albert (Bert), both of whom also adopted the stage name Howarde. Howarde and Black initially settled in San Francisco but were forced to relocate to New York following the devastating earthquake of 1906. Employed as a journalist and theatre critic, Howarde is also believed to have continued writing for the stage, including a number of vaudeville sketches and songs. She and Black may have possibly spent a period of time in England prior to returning to Australia in 1909.

1910- 1919:In 1911, Howarde took over the lease of the National Theatre, Balmain, where she staged pot pourri-style entertainments over the next three or four years. The shows produced ranged from dramatic sketches and dramas to burlesque, musical interludes, and vaudeville acts. At least two of her original works were staged at the National in 1914: The White Slave Traffic and Why Girls Leave Home. Howarde had toured the latter play through parts of regional New South Wales as early as 1912.

With Elton Black, Howarde spent much of 1915 touring the Fullers variety circuit with their own company. Among the known productions was an original revusical called Catch On (1915). Early the following year Howarde returned to the National Theatre while Black continued to tour the company through New Zealand on his own. The couple separated in 1918. The following year Howarde's greatest original success, Possum Paddock, premiered at the Theatre Royal Sydney.

1920-1939: Two years after premiering Possum Paddock, Howarde adapted the play into a silent film version. The success of both ventures helped finance a ten-month overseas tour by Howarde's company, with the itinerary including South Africa, the United States, and Great Britain. Although she found some success with another outback comedy, Gum Tree Gully (1927), Howarde's theatrical interests had begun to move towards dramatic realism during the early to mid-1920s. Among her more notable works from that decade are The Limit (1923), The Bush Outlaw (1923), Find Me a Wife (1923), and Common Humanity (1927).

One the final productions staged by Kate Howarde was in 1935, when she presented The Judgement of Jean Calvert (authorship unknown) in Sydney. She died in Kensington, Sydney, four years later from a bout of cerebral thrombosis.