Venice Biennale Reveals Back To Back Theatre as Recipients of The 2024 Golden Lion Award For Theatre

The Venice Biennale has announced Australia's Back to Back Theatre as the 2024 recipients of The Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.

The Venice Biennale is one of the most prestigious cultural festivals in the world. A celebration of art and architecture, the Biennale explores themes of politics and contemporary cultural and social issues through performance, sculpture and installations.  Each year it awards its highest prize,  the Golden Lion in the areas of film, theatre, dance and music, and biennially for art and architecture. 2023 recipients of the Golden Lion include Armando Punzo (theatre), Brian Eno (music) and the feature film ‘Poor Things' (film). directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone.

Announcing the award, the Venice Biennale described Back to Back Theatre as ‘the pioneer of renewal in Australian theatre and one of the companies known around the world for making disability a tool of artistic enquiry. Back to Back Theatre has captivated audiences around the world for the past thirty years with works that address social, political, and philosophical themes, challenging the construction of our imaginations and our perception of normalcy.'

The directors of the Venice Biennale's Theatre Department Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte (ricci/forte) said: “Back to Back Theatre present a visionary parable of communication that with poetic ferocity disintegrates every prejudice, every stigma of compassion: if the body has expressive limitations, on stage these demarcations themselves become a different grammar. Our fears, our puritan tolerance, our moral blindness are blown away by Back to Back Theatre's cruel tales of dangerous worlds, where diversity carries with it the amplification of knowledge, of inclusion, to heal the deformities of our awareness as apparently abled people. … Because no matter what limitation a person may feel, it is up to us as the human consortium to remove it; this is what culture does, this is theatre to be deserved, this and much more is Back to Back Theatre."

Upon hearing the news, Back to Back Ensemble responded: “Wow, this a very prestigious prize and. we weren't expecting this news. We are amazed and excited at what the award represents as it can open up artistic freedoms and allow us to continue to do what we want to do. It is thrilling to win a Golden Lion and we are very honoured."

Back to Back's co CEO's Artistic Director Bruce Gladwin and Executive Producer Tim Stitz responded: “On behalf of the wider staff team and Board at Back to Back, we are honoured to receive this news from La Biennale. It is thrilling and humbling in equal measure. This Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement recognises the many collaborators who create, perform, realise and support our work; past and present. We look forward to bringing our work FOOD COURT to Venice in June this year, which will be the first time the company has performed in Italy.”

The 2024  Biennale Teatro award ceremony will take place will take place on Sunday 30 June in the Sala delle Colonne, home of the Biennale, during the 52nd International Theater Festival.

Back to Back Theatre will premiere their new work, MULTIPLE BAD THINGS in their home town of Geelong at Geelong Performing Arts Centre from 11 – 13 April, internationally at Theater Nationale Brussels from 10 – 12 May and at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre from 29 May to 9 June 2024.

About Back to Back Theatre

Based in the Victorian regional centre of Geelong, Back to Back Theatre is widely recognised as an Australian theatre company of national and international significance. The company is driven by an ensemble of actors who identify as having an intellectual disability or as neurodivergent and is considered one of Australia's most important cultural exporters.

From 2009 to 2023, the company has undertaken 86 national and 124 international seasons of its work. This includes presentations and screenings at the world's pre-eminent contemporary arts festivals and venues such as the Edinburgh International Festival, London's V&A Museum and the Barbican, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival and Theater der Welt, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, The Public Theater in New York, Festival Tokyo, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires International Festival.

Since 2009, the company has delivered community and education workshops to over 34,000 participants, with a focus on artistic excellence and inclusive practice.

Back to Back Theatre has received 22 national and international awards including the International Ibsen Award, a Helpmann Award for Best Australian Work, an Edinburgh International Festival Herald Angel Critics' Award, two Age Critics' Awards, a New York Bessie and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Group Award for our long-standing contribution to the development of Australian theatre. In 2015, Artistic Director Bruce Gladwin received the Australia Council for the Arts' Inaugural Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre. The ensemble was awarded the ‘Best Ensemble' in the 2019 Green Room Awards.

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