Reviews

"Moira Finucane is a national treasure."

- The Age, Melbourne

“Underground and unforgettable, seductive and revolutionary, provocative and glorious.”

- Farsa Magazine, Buenos Aires

 “Finucane is ‘the original’ of our time. The Rapture ignites the healing of humanity.”  

- Theatre People, Australia

“I am speechless. I have just experienced something extraordinary ...in seeing this show you will feel like you're making history.”

- Weekend Notes, Australia

About The Rapture

She is known throughout the world as the great performance chameleon. Australia calls her a ‘National Treasure’, Latin America calls her ‘La Diosa’ (The Goddess). Brazil calls her 'The Devil in a Bottle'. Moira Finucane: live artist, scientist, genius magic realist and gothic queen presents her epic art event The Rapture: Art vs Extinction.

Welcome to the lair of the Ice Queen; a spike crowned, claw fingered, jewel-encrusted angel of the apocalypse, dressed in cascading silk couture, surrounded by porcelain icicles, sculptures of extinct birds, dripping ice trapped in ghost nets, operatic singers, rumbling piano and hardcore industrial music.

Constantly transforming from beast to human, demon to angel, Finucane immerses the audience in a powerful dreamscape of hope, extinction, treasuring, beauty, despair and the end of times.

The Rapture is inspired by Finucane’s life as an environmental scientist and worker in humanitarian development; her travels from Antarctica to the red deserts of Australia, her fascination with fairy tales and fables, with the human spirit and with art as its expressed power; and by her studies of the Anthropocene, and the immense threats facing life on this planet.

Commissioned by Mesto Zensk City of Women Festival (Slovenia) and Climakaze Festival (Miami), winner of the Climakaze Award 2017 for outstanding work on climate change, and chosen for the Australian exhibit at Prague Quadrennial 2019, The Rapture presents the work of 30 Australian artists from sculptors to painters, singers to composers in a treasure lair, a supersaturated ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ - a total work of art.

Credits

Created, written & performed by Moira Finucane

Directed by Moira Finucane & Jackie Smith

Dramaturgy: Jackie Smith & Nicholas Dorward

Choir: Shirley Cattunar, Piera Dennerstein

Live piano & piano composition: Rachel Lewindon

Composers: Shinjuku Thief (Darrin Verhagen & Ben Keene)

Additional Songs & Music:

Her Fingers & Waiting by Moira Finucane;

Gun to Face by Adam Hunt;

Ngarna Songwriter & collaborator: Eleanor Nalyirrima Dixon;

Songs of Standing Strong: Ray Dimakarri Dixon

Lighting design: Jenny Hector

Visual artists:

　The Great Auks | William Eicholtz

　Porcelain Icicles & Bowls | Catherine Lane

　Altarpiece | Arts Project Australia Cathy Staughton & Robyn Doherty, Anthony Romagnano, Megan Sloan

　Paul Hodges | frame by Josh Weeks

　The Wings | Josh Weeks

　Costumes: Gun Shy Design, Shirley Keon of Keon Couture, Isaac Lumis, Bryn Meredith, Angela Clark & Boutique Beads, Eugyeene Teh, Preston Zly

　Creative Producer: Kath Papas

Provocateur: Nicholas Dorward

Production: Sarah Platts, Rockie Stone, Liam Way

Chinese script translator: Ye Shulin

About Moira Finucane & Jackie Smith

Born with a love of the ocean and the bush in Australia, Moira Finucane studied environmental science, specializing in environmental law and World Heritage conservation, before moving into humanitarian development specialising in the area of gender violence. She began creating performance in the underground and alternative scene of the mid ‘90s; her background driving the creation of a unique performance form; a mash up of cabaret, fairy tale, museology, taxonomy, burlesque and archetype.  She is now a ‘national treasure’ in her home country of Australia, creator of the world’s most awarded provocative variety, widely credited with redefining cabaret for a new generation. Her work has been presented worldwide, acclaimed in 13 languages, with 15 theatre awards, and her Fellowships have taken her from some of the world’s most celebrated galleries to the red centre of Australia to Antarctica. With her company, Finucane & Smith, she’s founded the New Unrealism Movement, creating synaesthetic works that melts artform boundaries; illuminating unique, lesser heard artists and placing audience experience as central to the art.  

　　Internationally renowned for their arresting mix of provocation and entertainment, the house of Finucane & Smith Unlimited create “salons of humanity”— intimate theatrical spectacles, dark drama, beyond-genre cabaret and provocative variety—hijacking myriad art forms and engaging unique and extraordinary artists to create indelible visions of humanity, freedom, power and desire.

　　Finucane & Smith’s commissions and presentations internationally have spanned Eastern and Western Europe, UK, Latin America, China, Japan, Scandinavia and Antarctica. They have won critical acclaim in 13 languages and been the recipient of The Patrick White Playwright Award, 8 Green Room Awards, International Theatre Institute's CHAMACO Award for International Presentation of the Year 2015 (Cuba), and the Climakaze Award (Miami) for outstanding art in climate justice. Fellowships include the Australia Council, Creative Victoria Creators Fund, and in 2016 Finucane became the first Creative Fellow of National Gallery of Victoria.

　　The company is renowned for powerful cultural exchange and collaborations. Their Australian tours of avant-garde variety are the longest since the 1850s Gold Rush, celebrated from the desert to tiny country towns. Theirs are the first Australian works to be invited to the celebrated festivals Festival International de Buenos Aires (2013), FITBH (Brazil), Havana International Theatre Festival (2015); and the first Australian drama presented by ACT Shanghai International Theatre Festival (2016). In 2017 Finucane directed the Chinese production of The Flood to critical acclaim for Vertebra Theatre, with lead actress Su Li winning Best Actress Modern Drama Valley Festival, and in 2018 collaborated with the Qinghai Acrobatic Troupe for a major Sydney Festival Commission.