‘On the Couch with Beck Lister’ is part chat show, part therapy.

As part of the Words in Winter festival, Beck Lister will be launching her new show, On the Couch, at the Radius Gallery in Hepburn on Sunday August 28.

Join Beck as she chats with singer/songwriter Harmony Byrne, playwright/producer Adam Fawcett and writer Alexandra Collier about their work, inspirations, motivations and doubts.

Rebecca (Beck) Lister is an award-winning playwright, arts producer, MC and social worker. She is the Co-artistic Director of arts company Anvil Productions and the Director of Education and Psychosocial Programs at Eating Disorders Victoria. Rebecca is the monthly MC of intergenerational storytelling show Generation Women. Her book, co-written with Tony Kelly, ‘Growing Pineapples in the Outback’ published by University of Queensland Press was launched in 2020. Beck lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung country.

Harmony Byrne carries a powerful voice that can both devastate with muscular ferocity and affirm with the skilled restraint of a former church singer. Crafting a unique, unexpected blend of styles, her sharp, moving songwriting captures listeners from the first note. Her debut 10-track album Heavy Doors the confidently traverses a variety of styles from psych-rock to blues, alt-country, folk, pop, and gospel. With raw honesty, Byrne explores topics like tragedy, spirituality, depression, fear, addiction, and self-liberation. Harmony lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung country.

Adam Fawcett is a queer playwright and screenwriter who lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung country. With a practice focused on exploring queerness and trauma through text, his debut play, Become The One, a romantic two-hander exploring the collision between sport, sexuality and identity, won the 2018 Midsumma Playtime Award for New Queer Writing before premiering at Gasworks Arts Park in Melbourne for the 2019 Midsumma Festival. It then transferred to the 2019 ChillOut Festival in Daylesford, before embarking on a 2022 national tour that visited over 13 regional and metro venues from Stratford and Warrnambool to Parramatta and Canberra. Adam’s follow up play, Every Lovely Terrible Thing, a six-hander domestic drama exploring the repercussions of childhood sexual abuse on family cohesion, has been co-commissioned by TheatreWorks and Lab Kelpie and will premiere in November 2023.

Alexandria Collier is an award-winning Melbourne writer who has written for theatre, screen and print. Her memoir Inconceivable: Heartbreak, Bad Dates and Finding Solo Motherhood was recently published by Hachette. Alexandria lived and worked in New York for a decade where her plays have been produced Off Broadway, including Triplight, a new musical written with ARIA award-winning composer Greta Gertler Gold, at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater; Underland and Take Me Home. In Australia, her plays have been produced and developed at Sydney Theatre Company, La Mama and the Hayes Theatre Co. Alexandria lives and works in Naarm.

Douglas Lee Robertson is ‘On the couch’ resident musician  who lives and work in Naarm. Douglas is a singer, songwriter and is known for his work with the Icecream Hands, Charles Jenkins and The Amateur Historians, Root! And the DC3.

Date: Sunday August 28th
Time: 3:30pm – 5:00pm; $25/$20 concession
Venue: Radius – 76 Main Road, Hepburn
Bookings: https://www.anvilproductions.com.au

Beck Lister will also present a a session about co-writing with her co-author (and husband) Tony Kelly. In 2020, they launched their co-written book ‘Growing Pineapples in the Outback.’ The reoccurring question from readers and friends was ‘What’s it like to co-write a book? Did you argue, fight, agree on everything/nothing?’ Join them as they chat with poet Terence Jaensch about their book and the trials and tribulations of co-writing on Saturday 26 August from 2:00-3:30 at the Daylesford Hotel, 2 Burke Square, Daylesford. Entry is free. Bookings at trybooking.

For the full Words in Winter program, visit the WiW website.