AN IMAGINARY LIFE Comes to Moores Building Art Space in July

Seminal Australian classic novel An Imaginary Life by David Malouf has been adapted by actor Humphrey Bower (Things I Know To Be True, Mary Stuart, The Tempest) and will be performed by Humphrey and live musician Pavan Kumar Hari, who were last seen together onstage as Prospero and Ariel in BLACK SWAN State Theatre Company’s The Tempest.

An Imaginary Life is about the Ancient Roman poet Ovid living in exile on the edge of the Black Sea, and his encounter with a ‘wild child’. He teaches the child to speak and learns about the latter’s connection to nature and life.

An intimate duet for actor and musician, the show will be presented in the historic Moores Building Art Space in Fremantle, with the audience seated in close proximity around the performers.

An Imaginary Life is a site-responsive work tailor-made (and re-made) for found venues and their communities. The team will also be collecting stories from community members about each venue and sharing those as part of the project.

Creator Humphrey Bower says: “This is a story about learning to live wherever we find ourselves. It's about learning to coexist with people who are already here and have their own way of understanding where they live and how to live there. And it's about learning to belong here by coming to terms with who we are and who we can be here.”

The work will be launched in Fremantle – a thriving port city at the mouth of the Swan River where it flows into the Indian Ocean – and then tour to Cossack in 2025, an isolated town in the Pilbara on the edge of the tidal salt flats that separate the town from Nickol Bay: two very different locations, each of which resonates in its own way with a story about living and learning to live ‘on the edge of things’.

Humphrey Bower is an actor, director and writer based in Perth. He’s worked across the country in theatre, opera, dance, puppetry, film, TV, radio and audio book narration.

Recent credits include: Things I Know To Be True (BLACK SWAN State Theatre Company 2023), Nocturne (The Lab, Adelaide, 2022), The Duel (adaptor/director, WA Opera, 2022),Mary Stuart (Perth Festival, 2022), The Tempest (BLACK SWAN State Theatre Company, 2021),  Savage Grace (Steamworks Arts, Rehearsal 2021), The Cherry Orchard (BLACK SWAN/Perth Festival, 2021); The Golem (co-devisor/performer, The Blue Room Theatre, 2020); The Apparatus writer/ director/ performer, The Blue Room, 2019); and Sunset(writer/performer, STRUT/Perth Festival, 2019).

Awards include the 2021 Performing Arts WA Award for Best Independent Production (The Golem); 2020 Performing Arts WA Award for Best Actor (Male) and 2019 Blue Room Award for Best Performance (The Apparatus); 2013 Equity Guild Award for Best New Play (Skin); 2012 Blue Room Award for Best Production (Skin); 2011 Blue Room Members’ Choice Award and Best Performance Award (Wish); and 2010 Helpmann Award for Best Supporting Actor (Richard III).

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