Profile

Penne Thornton is a multidisciplinary creative producer working across performance, exhibitions, public programming, artist development and community engagement.
Penne has a research focus on collaborative, place-based practice and is an advocate for social justice and equity in the arts.









Email
pennethornton(at)gmail.com


Select Projects

A People’s Guide to (North) Geelong
Duwa
Death Warmed Up
Collective Mothering
Texture of Absence
Paradise Lots
Anything & Everything
Bodies of Water
Slip
The Director
International Womens Day
Pictures and Ghosts
Maps of the Heart











A People’s Guide to (North) Geelong

Exhibition

Creative Producer Penne Thornton
Lead Artist Yuhui Ng Rodriguez
Video Artist Laura Alice

Platform Arts, Djilang/Geelong

Supported by 
City of Greater Geelong, Indie School
The Good Neighbourhood Project

Images by Penne Thornton
2025
Collaborative research and digital arts project


A People’s Guide to (North) Geelong is a community project based in Geelong’s inner north in regional Victoria. Eight young people are engaged as honorary artists and explore place through in-depth conversations and walks with local and senior residents. 

This project is currently in development



Duwa (in development)

Performance

Lead Artist Amal Laala
Producer Penne Thornton
Video Artist Jarrah Gurrie

Geelong Arts Centre, Djilang/Geelong

Supported by 
Geelong Arts Centre Ignition Program 

Images by Skye Sobejko
2025Amal Laala

Duwa is a contemporary ritual — part performance art, part healing dinner party — that invites audiences to slow down, connect, and experience art through all senses. It responds to a growing appetite for works that bring together ceremony, nourishment, and performance in ways that transcend traditional theatre formats



Death Warmed Up

Performance

Lead Artist Georgia Banks
Curator/Producer Anador Walsh
Producer Penne Thornton
Supporting Artists Jacob Coppedge, Marcus Ian McKenzie
Dramaturgical & Production support APHIDS
Videography David Meagre

Djilang/Geelong
Platform Arts

Commissioned by Platform Arts and Supported by Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, Temperance Hall

Images by Sarah Walker
2025 Georgia Banks

Death Warmed Up is an immersive performance and dinner event where all attendees are invited into the farce: what would it be like if funerals were treated with the same paparazzi frenzy as other rites of passage?

Death Warmed Up sits within this world; a TV show with a focus on the food that is being served at celebrity funerals. This performed episode is about the funeral of Georgia Banks, C-List reality TV star of Remains To Be Seen fame.


Collective Mothering

Publication

Ed. Amber Smith with Amelia Wallin, Sarah Jones, Briony Galligan + Abbra Kotlarczyk, Emma Michaelis, Hayley Millar Baker, Lillian O’Neil, Pauline Rotsaert and
Penne Thornton

Saddle stitched, risograph publication printed + bound by Ranch Pressing (AU) with original hand drawn covers by Otto Opus Don-Smith.

53 pages
Edition of 40
ISBN 978-1-7636302-2-2

Supported by Platform Arts
2025 Ranch Pressing

In a time marked by ecological crisis, climate change, global conflict, and the instability of late-stage capitalism, matrilineal and maternal models of care offer vital, alternative ways of imagining continuity, resilience, and collective well-being. They provide a blueprint for rethinking relationships—not only between people, but also with the environment and future generations. They also propose systems and ways of being that sit outside of capitalist, consumerist, and Western models of thinking. Collective Mothering discusses these ideas, proposing potential models for connecting communities by creating sites for dialogue, companionship, sharing, and ultimately collective care...

Texture of Absence

Performance

Devised and performed by Carmen Yih in collaboration with Jiawen (Wendy) Feng

Platform Arts, Djilang/Geelong
Produced by Penne Thornton


Images by Cobie Orger
2025 Carmen Yih and Jiawen Feng

When someone or something exits a space, the space does not return to what it once was, but rather a negative state—defined by the absence of something that was once there.

In Texture of Absence, two dancers explore the physical manifestation of absence to examine how humans experience loss. Drawing from their relationships with identity, memory, and people, Yih and Feng retrace the multi-layered and multi-generational impacts of loss, uncovering the confusion, turmoil, and unexpected beauty that arrive in its wake.


Paradise Lots

Performance

Created By Pony Cam Created/Performed by Greta Cuthell, Breanna Deleo, Emma Clarke, Eza Bakker-Graham, Alexander Devorak, Amelia Vu,
River Madden, Eden Ariston, Lillian Stoel, Hannah Senftleben, Daniel Curnow, Aimee Miller, Seth Johnson, Jasmine Swindells,
Thomas Byrnes and Ilsa Fogg 
Artist Support Sheshtin Honey
Creative Support Enhui Cai

Platform Arts, Djilang/Geelong
Produced By Penne Thornton

Supported by City of Greater Geelong, Vic Health. Thanks to Back to Back Theatre. 

Images by Leiko Manalang-Frequin
2024Pony Cam

We’re creating a new world order. It looks like the one you created. Concrete, cars & slurpees.
But this is not your world. This world was born from the one you watched die.

Experimental theatre company Pony Cam collaborate with a group of young artists to transform an urban car park into a large-scale performance space. Audiences will be confronted with a series of intimate performance works that challenge unchecked assumptions about youth.

Paradise Lots is an experience trapped between teenage cynicism and middle-aged optimism; an apocalyptic fantasia set inside a teenage dystopia


Anything & Everything

Performance

Created and devised by infinity and Jackson Castiglione

Director Jackson Castiglione
Platform Arts infinity members: Poppy Goodman, Zara Nawaz, Harriet McNicol, Eza Bakker-Graham, Saskia Ellis-Gardam and Elm Macpherson

infinity Producer Penne Thornton
Project Producer Xavier O’Shannessy
Dramaturge Tamara Searle
Video and Media Designer Rhian Hinkley
Composition/sound design Robert P. Downie
Audio Operator Connor Ross
Set Design Tyler Hawkins
Costume Design/Stylist Sophie Hayward.
Lighting Designer Niklas Pajanti
Lighting ProgrammerTom Willis
Stage Manager Libby Gilbert


Commissioned by RISING with support from ACMI, Melbourne

Images by Sarah Walker
2022infinity ensemble

Young people’s lives are dominated by social media: selfies, meme cycles, video filters, "likes" and emojis. This screen culture defines their generation, but it's a world often hidden from the adults in their lives. 

Set in a TV studio, Anything & Everything is a live performance that glimpses into the intimate online and IRL spaces where young people navigate technology, identity, ability, connection and consent. 

Director Jackson Castiglione (The Dispute) works with an ensemble of artists aged between 11 and 21 who've collaborated online for two years. As the performers joke, share and converse live onstage, their peers manipulate cameras, digital filters and video. Together they augment their identities in real-time to explore the thresholds between screen, reality and agency.

Bodies of Water

Performance

Project concept Katerina Kokkinos-Kennedy
Co-created with Sarah Walker
Writing and Dramaturgy Katerina Kokkinos-Kennedy and Sarah Walker
Sound Design Sarah Walker

Eastern Beach, Djilang
Commissioned by Platform Arts, 
Produced by Penne Thornton

Images by Ben Hoffman 
2023Triage Live Art Collective

 
Taking place at Eastern Beach, Bodies of Water explores our relationship with the sea, as a place of nourishment, danger and transcendence. Audiences follow the boardwalk and listen to audio as the sun sets. The ocean is the birthplace of humanity, of myth-making, an unseen world brimming with life; and now, a place deeply compromised by environmental degradation. Bodies of Water contemplates the echoes between our own bodies of water, and the ocean that we are drawn to immerse ourselves in.

Slip

Performance
 
Performer and Choreographer: Rebecca Jensen
Performer and Composer: Aviva Endean
Visual Design: Romanie Harper
LX Design: Jennifer Hector
Outside eye: Lana Šprajcer
Animation: Patrick Hamilton
Technical Operator while touring: Jordi Edwards

Platform Arts, Geelong
Produced by Penne Thornton

Images by Sarah Walker and Lana Špra
2025Bec Jensen


In Slip, dance and sound interconnect in a unique duet between award-winning artists, dancer Rebecca Jensen and musician Aviva Endean. Central to Slip is the sound-effect technique of Foley, used in film where sounds on screen are recreated in post-production using unlikely objects and body movements in a practice of substitutions, such as waving a pair of leather gloves to make the sound of flapping bird wings.
Slip connects the illusion of Foley to the complexity of our present moment. 

The Director

Performance
Creators – Lara Thoms, with Scott Turnbull, Aaron Orzech and Lz Dunn
Performers – Lara Thoms, Scott Turnbull
Designer – Katie Sfetkidis
Sound – Kenneth Pennington


Platform Arts, Geelong
Produced by Penne Thornton

The Director is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body; the City of Melbourne through Arts House and through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts
.
Images by Genevieve Walshe
2023APHIDS

The Director is a bold performance starring charismatic ex-funeral director of 21 years, Scott Turnbull, and artist Lara Thoms. 

Taking up a universal experience and taboo topic, Turnbull and Thoms demystify, expose and expand elements of the death industry, using humour and first-hand knowledge to dig a little deeper on what happens after we go. Nothing is off limits, including the smell of a crematorium, the tools of the mortuary, and driving tractors into a funeral chapel. At a time when dying costs an average of $10,000 and funerals happen within a week, death can seem like a very expensive drive-thru meal.

WiCLA

Film

 Length: 18:30
Produced by Penne Thornton
Directed by Caleb Plumridge 
Assistant Director James Duggan
Director of Photography Aidan Mair


Commissioned by City of Greater Geelong


Images by Penne Thornton, James Duggan
2020True South Film

This short documentary celebrates the extraordinary contributions of women across the Geelong region. A selection of nominees for the Women in Community Life Awards share their stories, achievements and experiences in their chosen fields including midwifery, law, cultural education, performing arts, community services and science and engineering. This film honours the nominees for the Women in Community Life Awards which are held on International Women’s Day.  

Pictures & Ghosts

Performance
Performer and Choreographer Arabella Frahn-Starkie
Photographer Trudi Treble
Director Meg Duncan
Cinematographer Bonita Carzino
Composer Robert Downie
All images Trudi Treble

Platform Arts, Djilang, Geelong
Produced by Penne Thornton

Images by Ben Hoffman
2022Annabelle Frahn- Starkie

Pictures & Ghosts gathers the recollections and traces of a dance. From stark photographic memory to a distant sense of nostalgia, performer Arabella Frahn-Starkie draws upon the relationship between dance, and the means of documenting and archiving performance through video, photography, and notation.

The documentation floods across multiple screens creating silhouettes and visual obstructions, and layers the use of analog and digital technology. Arabella’s marking, blurring and overwriting of the documentation, works to undercut the accuracy and solidity of the documentation, giving her tactile control of the images of herself as she reasserts her authorship over her visual reproduction. 

Maps of the Heart

Performance
Written by Abraham Herasan, Sila Toprak, Keak Joak.
Directed by Dave Kelman.
Composed by Callum Watson.
Perfomed by Abraham Herasan, Alphonse Mulashe, Beckham (Bach) Dong, Eto Claudine, Fiston Baraka, Irene Bakulikira, Keak Joak, Nina Untivero, Sila Toprak and Ali Hosseini

Platform Arts, Djilang, Geelong
Produced by Penne Thornton

Images by Sarah Walker
2022North Youth Theatre

MOTH tells the stories of eight characters from different times and different countries based on the real experiences of cast members and their friends and families. Interwoven with these stories are the actors’ reflections on who they are, where they have come from and how it feels to be living in a society that struggles to embrace difference. 

Written by the ensemble and told through fast-paced, funny theatre, MOTH spans Congo, Philippines, Iran, Vietnam, Turkey, Rwanda and Tanzania and moves from the 1960s to the present day. 




 I acknowledge the life systems of land, sea and atmosphere and the Waddawurrung people’s as the First People’s on whose sacred Country I live. This land was never ceded. I give respect to all First Nations people’s, their elders and rising generations