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Kendra Keller is a writer, physical performer, theatre maker, producer, and tender of the creative compost.

 

Her work has been described by audiences as provocative, passionate, versatile, philosophical, absorbing and hilarious: a voice that needs to be heard.

 

Kendra’s show ‘Yay For Cane Toads!’ is an immersive tea-party experience that dishes up colonial-capitalist-barbarity with some sugar on top. It was nominated for ‘Best Theatre’ and won the ‘Spirit Of Fringe Award’ for its premiere season at Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2019.

Her current investigation 'Apples' explores themes of femininity, repression and exoticism; juicing her youth as a white- Australian wanna-be-Persian-house-wife, all over the carpet.

She has presented original performance works in contexts including Woodford Folk Festival, Wonderland Festival, Malaka Performing Arts Festival, HillsceneLIVE and Melbourne Fringe, and has created site specific performances from Tasmainia’s Tarkine wilderness to North Queensland’s sugar plantations.

 

Artists she has trained with in the last three years include: Yumiko Yoshioka, Agung Gunawan, Yumi Umiumare, Giovanni Fusetti, Tony Yap, Anna Yen, Helen Smith, Daniel Crisp, Charlotte Roberts and Leisa Shelton.

 

Also known as spoken word artist Lady Longdrop, Kendra’s collection of poems 'Hey Moon!' sold out six times in its first year (2015-16).

 

In 2020 Kendra stepped into the space of independent producer, creating FLUORESCENT: An Emergency Festival of Original Theatre. She draws on over a decade of experience in arts management, including, most recently, two years as Marketing Manager with ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, where she worked on national and international tours of Australia’s highest profile First Nations theatre productions.

 

Kendra was born on Kulin country, from a line of cheeky and compulsively hospitable Swiss matriarchs, and raised on Kabi Kabi country by a bunch of bohemian folkies who forgot to send her to school but gave her a different kind of education. She has a couple of University degrees and the histories of many rich moments of communion with nature, community and self, alive in her body and mind.

 

      ‘I believe, as an artist, I have two responsibilities: to listen, and to speak; to listen with my inner and outer ears, and speak in the languages I hear. If I can do this well, not only might I bring inner and outer worlds into more fluent conversation, but there is a chance I can make work juicy enough to rot down into good soil for future generations to grow their art in. That’s my hope for my work.’

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