Wildly experimental and wildly entertaining
Daily Review
Embarrassing, abhorrent, and dangerous
The Herald Sun
Frenzied, subversive, anti-theatre explosion of energy
The Music
Tobias Manderson-Galvin is a performance maker, artist, and writer based in Naarm / Melbourne.
His work includes contemporary performance, dance, live art, installation, text projects, and critical writing.
He is Co-Director of climate activist performance company Doppelgangster. He is lead artist of hauntological performance collaboration The Midnight Horrors. He was co-founder and artistic director of MKA new writing theatre (2010-2024).
His practice routinely troubles the capitalist myths of scarcity, stability, and freedom; the responsibility of authority; and the potential of performance as a site of political action.
Manderson-Galvin has presented widely in the performing arts, for example:
– the young wolf for Queensland Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty, aged 11 (1996)
– the subject of investigations by the Australian Federal Police, due to performance poetry in an airport (2004)
– touring with Doppelgangster to COP21, inc. a protest piece ineffective at ending climate change at the COP Expo at Paris’ Grand Palais (2015)
– performing in Nobody Special a show for one audient at a time with sibling Kerith Manderson-Galvin (2023)
Manderson-Galvin’s work has been presented by: Melbourne Theatre Company, Melbourne Writers Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Experimentica Cardiff, Site2/Safle2 Aberystwyth, et al. He has presented across Australia, Europe, and the UK.
‘The Economist’ is available through Playlab (2012). ‘Dogmeat’ (2014) is part of MKA’s AUTOCANON series (2015). ‘Everybody Loses: The Death Diary of Dr Karl Patterson Schmidt’ is available from Doppelgagnster/Sheffield Hallam University (2017). He has collaborated with Chelsea Hickman, Burning House, Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm, Side Pony Productions, Snuff Puppets, Fast Fashun, and others.
He was awarded the RE Ross Trust Playwrights’ Prize (2012), the St Martins National Playwriting Award (2009), and an Ibsen Scope Grant (2026). As Artistic Director of MKA he was co-awarded a Green Room Award for Special Contribution to Independent Theatre (Melbourne, 2012).
He studied sociology and politics and holds a Master of Writing for Performance (University of Melbourne). In recent years he has periodically held a visiting artist position at Sheffield Hallam University’s School of Stage and Screen.
It’s fucking Marxist theatre
Cassie Tongue
Theatrical saboteur
The Age
Playful, thoughtful, scattered, indulgent, and gloriously obnoxious…
Daily Review
photograph by Soma Garner