Join Portal lead artist and Rawcus Ensemble Member Prue Stevenson and Dr. Peter Koval for an in-depth online conversation about sensory overload, emotional self-regulation, anxiety and sensory play to help support a sense of well-being. This conversation will be facilitated by Rawcus Artistic Director, Kate Sulan. Portal is an immersive installation, a pop-up respite space to combat anxiety and sensory overload and is part of the MENTAL exhibition. It is a large tactile fabricated tent-like sculpture and invites audience participation.
Portal explores the concept of sensory rooms, which people with autism use to support them through meltdowns, through an artist lens. Portal invites audience members, with and without sensory sensitivities, to immerse themselves in an arts experience designed to release anxiety. Informed by the experience of members of the Rawcus Ensemble who experience anxiety and sensory overload, this is a space filled with choices to imaginatively engage and escape.
Portal is presented by performing arts company Rawcus.
This presentation will be Auslan interpreted.
Meet the Presenters
Prue Stevenson is an artist who aims to celebrate and progress autistic culture for autistics, while creating experiences that are more broadly accessible to all. She uses repetitive and tactile processes to allow for experiences of sensory play and to create spaces for downtime. Prue is a member of the Rawcus Ensemble, 3rd Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo and founder of Stim Your Heart Out. Refer to Prue's journal article for more insight into her ideas and lived experience behind Portal.
Dr. Peter Koval is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. His research lies at the intersection of social, personality and clinical psychology with a focus on emotional functioning in daily life. He studies how feelings fluctuate from moment to moment and how people try to influence or regulate their emotions in everyday situations and tries to understand how these emotional processes are linked with well-being and adjustment.
Kate Sulan is a performance maker, director, dramaturge and facilitator. Kate is the founding Artistic Director of Rawcus, an award-winning ensemble of performers with diverse minds, bodies and imaginations. Her work has been described as “a moving assertion of humanity with a wicked sense of humour.” Kate’s work embraces complexity and diversity and is underpinned by the desire to fuel dreams, accumulate questions, slow down time, amplify connection and celebrate humanity.
Rawcus is a critically acclaimed long term ensemble of 14 performers with diverse minds, bodies and imaginations. For over 21 years the company has been creating audacious performances and arts experiences. The Rawcus Public Program is a curated program of offerings that are created through ongoing conversations between the Rawcus Ensemble and a diverse range of artists and communities. This program is responsive to time and place and is expansive and varied in form, scale, timeframe and audience.