Here is the biography I wrote about myself as if someone else were writing about me:
Maeve Marsden is a writer, producer and theatremaker, creating work across both main stage and independent venues and festivals. She is also the Creative Director of Varuna the National Writers’ House and Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival.
In 2020, she was a member of Belvoir Theatre’s Philip Parsons Early-Career Playwrights Lab, and the play she wrote as part of that fellowship, Blessed Union, was programmed in Belvoir’s 2023 season.
In 2022, Maeve directed the Australian premiere of rock musical Lizzie for Hayes Theatre Co. She was nominated for a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Direction of a Musical.
Maeve directs Queerstories, a national storytelling project with an award-winning podcast that has brought nearly 500 writers to the stage at sold out events around the country, with a collection of stories Maeve edited, published by Hachette and launched at the Sydney Opera House in 2018.
Mother’s Ruin: A Cabaret about Gin, a theatrical cabaret Maeve co-created, toured consistently for four years, with three sold out UK tours and critically acclaimed seasons at Sydney Festival, Sydney Opera House, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Melbourne Cabaret Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as well as countless regional venues in Australia and New Zealand. Mother’s Ruin was named one of Time Out’s Best 10 Shows on Sydney Stages 2017, and was nominated Best Cabaret in the Perth Fringe World, BroadwayWorld and Sydney Theatre Awards, and Best Writing, Green Room Awards.
The follow up production for the creative team, Fat Musicals: A Body of Work, premiered in 2019 at Darlinghurst Theatre Company and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. The production was booked to tour extensively in 2020, but seasons were cancelled due to the pandemic.
Winner Best Cabaret, Sydney Fringe 2016, Lady Sings it Better, a feminist comedy cabaret act Maeve conceived of, directed and performed in toured to critical acclaim for 10 years.
A well-respected cultural commentator, Maeve has hosted and curated events for Sydney Writer’s Festival, Melbourne Writers’ Festival, Sydney Opera House, Mudgee Readers’ Festival, Newcastle Writer’s Festival, Adelaide Writer’s Week, Sydney Mardi Gras and Ubud Writer’s Festival in Bali. As an opinion writer, essayist and critic, her work has appeared in the
Sydney Morning Herald, Guardian Australia, Overland, Junkee, ABC, SBS,
ArtsHub, Archer Magazine, Daily Review and Audrey Journal. In 2019 and 2020, Maeve programmed Queer Thinking, Sydney Mardi Gras’ talks and ideas festival.
She is regularly called upon to contribute to LGBTQI+ projects, editing the ABC’s Sydney Mardi Gras 40th Anniversary Magazine in 2018 and narrating ABC radio documentary The Making of Mardi Gras for The History Listen that same year. In 2019, Maeve collaborated with Google’s Creative Labs to create My Mother’s Kitchen, an interactive podcast that featured queer storytellers. The project launched at Sheffield Documentary Festival and All About Women at Sydney Opera House.
Maeve has been a Producer for Arts on Tour and Program Director for Music Council of Australia. She also worked in marketing and events for National Disability Services, the Department of Ageing Disability and Home Care, and the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse.
Currently Maeve is working on a new musical with writer Rebecca Shaw and composer Victoria Falconer about queerness and climate activism, The Recruits, for which they received City of Sydney funding. She is in the early stages of collaboration on an opera adaptation of a trans coming of age tale by Teddy Dunn, A Brief History of Suits, under the guidance of Ali McGregor’s Fluxus. And she is collaborating with Coady Green on QueerClassic, a contemporary classical song cycle, for which they were thrilled to receive funding from City of Melbourne, APRA AMCOS and Creative Australia.
Maeve lives on Dharug and Gundungurra country with her partner, toddler and beloved rescue dog, Dottie.
