The Flying Nun program is a Brand X performing arts residency. We support artists to develop experimental, contemporary, counterculture, and brave new works.
The artist’s challenge: Each project gets $2,600 and 1 week in our venue to bring their show to life, followed by a 2 night performance run and majority box office take.
Audiences are in a unique position at The Flying Nun. As you enter through our doors on performance night you will be part of welcoming a fresh creative vision into the world. A privileged experience with a delicious element of risk involved for artists and audiences alike.
East Sydney Community and Arts Centre (ESCAC) is a space where Performing Artists can traverse the entire creative process, from development to presentation. Brand X provides space to artists through our programs and affordable spaces for hire, removing the financial barriers when developing and presenting new work to Sydney audiences.
With this season’s theme Neighbourhood/Sin, we pay homage to ESCAC’s former life as Heffron Hall. A place where perceived ‘sinners’ could congregate, celebrate, find care and create. A local hub with a rich history of LGBTQIA+ activism, music and theatre, religious services, food co-ops and early Mardi Gras events.
In the 1970s, Sister Carol Pedersen, known affectionately by the locals as “the flying nun” founded D4 Darlinghurst: a vital support centre fostering community spirit for those most at risk.
In the 1980’s, the Metropolitan Community Church, led by the Rev Greg Smith, welcomed a congregation of all genders, sexualities, ages and cultural backgrounds, especially for those affected by HIV/AIDS, championing unheard voices.
The Flying Nun Season 9 works celebrate, critique or subvert our ideas of community bonds. With a world in seemingly ever-rising crisis; domestic bliss faces globalised market abyss, the hyperlocal meets hyper-inflation, the body corporate battles body politics. Our artists form a creative congregation of radical ideas and new ways to experience our present.
We hope our beloved ESCAC still holds a special place in the Sydney landscape as a safe-space where creativity and community has a steady home, where art does not just survive but thrives, and artists can find space to RISK EVERYTHING.
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