Karen Corbett

First professional acting gig was the Original Australian production of Godspell. Karen went on to tour Australia with the Claremont Theatre Company with the band Men at Work . She spent several years with the Arena Theatre Company before taking a break to start a family.

Her most recent theatre (2019-2021) is 'unHOWsed' about older women's homelessness. Karen contributed to the script and performed in this work along with 7 other women who have also experienced homelessness. The critics hailed it as outstanding "If you only see one piece of theatre this year go and see unHOWsed!' The film version has been selected for the Cairo Int. Fest of Experimental Theatre (2020) and Brazil (2021).

Her plays have toured Australia and the Europe and in 2012 she was awarded the Medal of Ulm, Germany, for her one-woman show, Orphanage of the Animals. She was awarded the Murray Sutherland Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Contribution to Theatre for her one-woman show: To The Outside World (Anthill & La Mama 1986, 89, 90). Her children’s play Ahoy Ms. Matilda toured primary schools with a season at the Melbourne Zoo, and her play Viva La Vida Frida Kahlo toured Australia and the show she co-wrote and performed about Sylvia Plath was nominated for two Premiere’s Awards and had seven productions. She was a founding member of the Banyule ReThink Waste Wise theatre company which received 4 from Keep Australia Beautiful Education awards while she was with it and she also received the Jageurs Irish-Australian Literary Prize for her fiction.

In 1997 Karen founded the first Australian undergraduate course in in Script Writing for Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, (later Melbourne University) where she lectured for ten years. In 2007 Karen was invited to create the first course in Theatre Directing at the Council of Adult Education. She has lectured at several universities in play writing and vocal production. She was also a member then Chair of the National Stage Committee of the Australian Writers’ Guild in 1996. She has published articles and given international conference papers and Keynote Addresses on creative/theatre writing. Karen has sat on several theatre boards and been a script assessor and competition judge for the AWG and Crash Test Drama. She is currently developing a new show for the unHOWsed Ensemble.