Robyn Archer AO FAHA is a singer, writer, artistic director and public advocate for the arts.
Winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Cabaret Performer 2013, and named Cabaret Icon at the 2016 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, she currently performs highly acclaimed recitals of French (Que Reste-t’Il), German (Dancing on the Volcano) and American (The Other Great American Songbook) song.
She wrote and directed The Sound of Falling Stars (2017/18) and released her album Classic Cabaret Rarities in 2019. In that same year, she premiered Picaresque, an exhibition of 200 cardboard maquettes from her architectural collection, with performances amongst them, for the 2019 Adelaide Festival, and also premiered Fortunes of Exile with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
Covid19 lockdowns were responsible for multiple cancellations through 2019 and 2020, but she returned to the stage in 2021 for the 20th anniversary of Ten Days on The Island (the festival she created for Tasmania) with the feisty and moving Mother Archer’s Cabaret for Dark Times. Further lockdowns saw that show postponed until the 2021 Adelaide Cabaret festival and 2022 at Melbourne Recital Centre. During lockdowns, Robyn contributed video performances to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and Midusmma as well as readings for University of Melbourne podcasts and essays and podcasts for the Australian Book Review.
In July 2022 Robyn premiered Robyn Archer: an Australian Songbook with a two-week season for Queensland Theatre. Working with long-term accordionist George Butrumlis, actor and guitarist Cameron Goodall and pianist Enio Pozzebon the show was an audience and critical success and will tour in 2023: Belvoir Theatre in Sydney has already announced a two-week season in October 2023 and announcements are still to come regarding the show in Melbourne and Adelaide in June 2023, Tasmania in November 2023 and Canberra. Robyn will also perform at the Sydney Town Hall for World Pride in February 2023.
Robyn is recognised internationally for her expertise in the repertoire of the Weimar Republic (Brecht and his musical collaborators and others from the 1920s and 30s Germany) which she has been performing throughout Australia and worldwide since the 1970s, including at the National Theatre, London, in Hong Kong, Honolulu, and at the Brecht Festival in Augsburg. Her many other stage successes include A Star is Torn (through Australia and at Wyndham’s in London’s West End for a year), Tonight Lola Blau.
She has written and had produced plays including Il Magnifico, Poor Joanna (with poet Judith Rodriguez), and Architektin; plays with music including Songs From Sideshow Alley, Café Fledermaus and The Bridge; and devised cabarets featuring her own songs and writing such as The Pack of Women, Scandals and Cut and Thrust.
Robyn has recorded eleven albums, most notably Robyn Archer Sings Brecht (recorded at Abbey Road with The London Sinfonietta). Her complete back catalogue is gradually being digitally re-released by Rouseabout Records (Undercover music) and is available on various digital platforms.
But Robyn is equally known worldwide for her wider contributions to the arts. She was formerly Artistic Director of the National Festival of Australian Theatre, the Adelaide and Melbourne International Arts Festivals, creator of Ten Days on the Island for Tasmania and The Light in Winter (for Federation Square Melbourne), and Creative Producer of The Centenary of Canberra 2013.
Robyn continues to combine advisory and mentoring roles with her own creative output. Former Deputy Chair of The Australia Council, Robyn was Cultural Advisor to Arts and Culture on the Gold Coast for three years and chaired the Board of Arts Centre Gold Coast. In this role, she was tasked with the transition of the centre to HOTA: Home of the Arts for a further two years. She also chaired the inaugural Master of Fine Arts in Cultural Leadership at NIDA and for ten years she mentored for the European Festivals’ Association Academy Ateliers.
Robyn has published numerous books from The Robyn Archer Songbook to Mrs Bottle’s Burp and Detritus (a collection of her public speeches) as well as writing for the Griffith Review and the Australian Book Review.
Among her many awards, including the ABR Laureate, the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cultural Leadership Award, the SA Premier’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Society for Performing Arts’ International Achievement Award and an ARIA Award for Best Soundtrack (The Pack of Women), the 2018 Adelaide Festival of Ideas Dedication recognised Robyn for her contribution to the world of ideas and public life. In the same year, she also received the JC Williamson Centenary Lifetime Achievement Award. Robyn is an Officer of the Order of Australia, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), Officer of the Crown (Belgium), Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide as well as Flinders, Canberra and Griffith Universities and the University of South Australia.