About Us

Who we are

Founded in 2001, Currency House Inc. is a non-profit association open to all practitioners and supporters of the Australian performing arts, including theatre, film, television, music, and dance.

Our aim is to stimulate, enrich, and advance the quality and enjoyment of the Australian performing arts by:

• being a continually expanding resource centre
• functioning as an accessible and vigorous forum and think-tank
• advocating and advancing the status and standards of the Australian performing arts in the media and with the public at large.

What we do

Currency House:

• meets regularly for background briefings and forums
• seeks ways to activate our life as performing artists
• encourages the exploration of theory and practice
• commissions research to support debate on issues of professional concern
• publishes works of record on the performing arts in Australia.

Our Board

Katharine Brisbane, AM, Hon.Ph.D (UNSW, UWA) Executive Director, was co-founder in 1971 of Currency Press Pty Ltd, the performing arts publishers and it publisher for 30 years. In 2001 she founded Currency House Inc. as a non-profit association to assert the value of the performing arts in public life. She was a theatre critic for 21 years, notably national critic of the Australian 1967–74 during a time of radical change; and has published widely on the history of Australian theatre, including Not Wrong, Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre (2005) and on drama in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (ed Peter Pierce, 2009). Over 40 years she has received many awards for service to the performing arts.

John Golder is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Theatre in the University of New South Wales. His special research interests are in theatre architecture and stagecraft in 17th century France, the reception of Shakespeare in France and Australia from the 18th to the 20th centuries, and translations of 17th- and 18th-century French playtexts for the English stage. He is editor of Currency House’s Platform Papers and other publications, including O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage (2001)

Steve Lawrence is the Executive Officer of the Australian Social Innovation Exchange created to find fresh solutions to Australia’s key social challenges through cross-sector collaboration.  He also runs a consultancy practice.  His clients include the South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet, Jesuit Social Services in Melbourne, Grow Employment Council in Sydney. For 29 years Steve was Founder, CEO and Social Entrepreneur of WorkVentures, a national  entrepreneurial non-profit organisation which has had long-standing partnerships with major corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Westpac and Fujitsu.  In that time Steve has also been part of creating over 13 non-profit organisations, including JOB Futures, United Way Sydney, Jobs Australia, Social Ventures Australia, In 2004 he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for a Social Enterprise in NSW & ACT.  In 2005 WorkVentures and Microsoft won the Prime Minister’s Community Business Partnership Longevity Award for their 20-year collaboration to bring technology resources and skills to disadvantaged Australians.

Sara Leonardi is a Managing Consultant in Strategy & Change at IBM Global Business Services. She has had twenty five years assisting organisations to choose, apply and support technology better and more cost effectively. Her consulting specialty is IT decision governance and technology strategy, primarily in the Financial Services industry.

Harriet Parsons is a Melbourne artist with an interest in cultural policy and strategies for supporting the creative lives of artists. She is a graduate of Sydney University in Chinese and English and from Sydney College of the Arts in Painting. She worked for a decade in theatre administration and as an editor for Currency Press. She moved to Melbourne in 1999 where she was a studio artist at Gertrude Street Galleries.  She has exhibited work at the Melbourne Art Fair, the National Gallery of Victoria and Eastlink Gallery in Shanghai. In 2008 she received an Australia Council grant which has resulted in a new body of work now in development, Homeland.

Martin Portus is Director of Marketing and Communication at the Australia Council for the Arts, following a similar role at Parramatta City Council. He was also senior policy adviser to the Lord Mayor of Parramatta.  Martin was for five years the inaugural Director of Public Affairs at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. From 1989-2000 he was an ABC TV and Radio National arts broadcaster and producer. He was the presenter of Arts National, presenter of Performance (a performing arts specialist program), and the producer/presenter of Arts Today. A former journalist, he has worked as a theatre critic for over twenty years. He trained at NIDA, holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide (Major Politics) and a Diploma of International Journalism from City University, London.

John Wardle is a musician, member of the Music Council of Australia (MCA), federal delegate for the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) and a policy adviser in the Office of the Hon. Ian Macdonald MLC, NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Minister for Energy, Minister for Mineral Resources and Minister for State Development. John has written extensively on the regulation of entertainment venues in Australia, was the strategist behind the “Raise the Bar” campaign, and played a key role in the overhaul of NSW Liquor laws and Place of Public Entertainment (PoPE) regulations for live entertainment in NSW.

Dr Mark Williams is a solicitor in private practice based in Melbourne. He has over twenty-five years experience in arts, entertainment and technology law, postgraduate qualifications in intellectual property law and a doctorate on seventeenth-century dramaturgy. He was a director of the visual arts copyright collecting society VISCOPY from 2000 to 2004 and is a panel member of the Arts Law Centre of Australia.  From the debate on moral rights legislation in 1998 to the present, Mark has successfully lobbied government for the protection of the interests of Australian artists in many art forms, including indigenous visual arts and the balance between private rights and public interest. In 2009 he was appointed Adjunct Professor at RMIT University and lectures on the legal issues applicable to the arts.  He is a regular contributor and occasional presenter on arts issues for community radio PBS-FM and is President of the Green Room Awards for excellence in live performing arts.

Currency House Annual Reports

Annual Report for 2007, prepared by Katharine Brisbane.
Annual Report for 2006, prepared by Katharine Brisbane.
Annual Report for 2005, prepared by Katharine Brisbane.
Annual Report for 2004, prepared by Katharine Brisbane
Annual Report for 2003, prepared by Katharine Brisbane.