G’day, my name’s Liz Arday. I’m a theatre professional originally from Australia and currently based in London. I’ve been working in the performing arts for almost two decades, and this website serves as my portfolio.

I’m a graduate of Macquarie University (BA, English Lit) and the Victorian College of the Arts (PGD, Performance Creation - Directing). Before this, I trained as an actor in Meisner at the Actor’s Pulse, Sydney.

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Currently, I am the Executive Director & Joint CEO of Company Three, a theatre company led by the ideas of its 75+ teenage members. We co-devise new works that give teenagers the power to tell their own stories and create their own change, creating powerful, socially driven theatre from a perspective often missed within public discourse. 

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Prior to this, I was General Manager and then Business Director at VAULT, producer of VAULT Festival. In this role I launched our incubator festival A Pinch of VAULT and The Glitch, a social and performance space in Waterloo - both creating hundreds of low-cost, low-risk performance opportunities for emerging artists each year, contributing significantly to the London theatre ecology.

I’ve worked for a range of leading theatre companies in the UK and Australia, including the Young Vic, Wilton’s Music Hall, Sydney Theatre Company, Regent’s Park Open Air and Griffin Theatre.

 

As a theatre director, I’ve made work in the UK, Australia and Europe. I gravitate towards new writing projects, especially work that experiments with form and centralises queer, feminist, working class and/or colonial stories. Most of this work was made between 2010 - 2022, including the OFFIE-nominated The Eisteddfod and a number of new writing debuts, including the Sydney Fringe sell-out Everyone I’ve Ever Loved or Slept With or Both by M. St Claire and Magda, a Georgian-UK collaboration.

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In 2018 I was awarded the Sandra Bates Director’s Award by the Ensemble Theatre Sydney. I spent a year on attachment as resident assistant director, working on Unqualified by Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore (director Janine Watson) & Alan Ayckbourn's comedy trilogy The Norman Conquests (director Mark Kilmurry), as well as directing a script development and public reading of Tracy Trinder’s Confessions of a Book Club.

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I’m passionate about creating meaningful third spaces, championing risk-taking dramaturgies and future-proofing arts organisations. With my skill set in executive leadership, strategic planning, arts management, festival production and a deep commitment to collaboration, I strive to empower artists and audiences alike, fostering a vibrant and sustainable cultural landscape.

 

If you'd like to get in touch, please fill in the form below.​