The Director

BAGRYANA POPOV is an award-winning theatre artist who works in an interdisciplinary way. She has collaborated with acclaimed professional artists, students and communities, working as director, actor, dramaturg and performance maker. She is interested in how artistic practice can speak about social, political and environmental questions. Much of her work has examined themes of displacement, refugee experience and trauma as a result of war: Subclass 26A, Studies in Being Human, Cafe Scheherezade, Sarajevo Suite, Anna and Of Cows, Women and War. Internationally, Bagryana has directed for the National Theatre of Macedonia, Bitola, presented work in Finland and performed in Bulgaria and Hungary. The dance work He is not here, created with Simon Ellis, was performed at the Red House, Sofia. She has taught theatre and acting students at WAAPA, VCA, and for ten years in the La Trobe University theatre department. Her project Uncle Vanya was most recently presented as part of the Adelaide Festival 2019 at The Cedars, the estate of artist Sir Hans Heysen. The project, produced with La Mama, is a site-specific, durational version of Chekhov’s early environmentalist play, transposed to the Australian landscape. Most recently Bagryana played the title role in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children, translated by Tony Kushner, directed by Damien Millar.