Lara Croydon is a proud Gudjal / Gudjala Kabulba woman. She was born and raised on Gubbi Gubbi / Kabi Kabi country and has lived and worked in Meanjin for over a decade. In 2013, she worked on the first ever Clancestry festival and serendipitously returned to run the festival in 2019 and 2022. Clancestry is a contemporary First Nations festival spread over three weeks and includes theatre, dance, visual arts, comedy, burlesque, music, workshops and creative developments.
Lara also runs the Sparks program with our partner company Playlab. Sparks is a First Nations Playwrights program aimed to develop First Nations writers in a culturally supported process to create a play. Under the guidance of industry practitioners, participants are led through a range of activities and workshops designed to stimulate ideas, introduce elements of craft, and provide strategies for undertaking a brand-new script idea. This is a program for Indigenous writers, including those in the very beginnings of their writing career with a concept that they would like to explore. Sparks has supported more than 11 writers over the past three years and seven of these works are going on to further development, with three already planned to go into production with various companies.
In her spare time, which is a luxury, Lara is a Youtuber and Circus performer. She wanted to be involved in circus since she was a small child and saw trapeze artists in a picture book. She didn’t grow up in an area with circus so she made her surrounding her training equipment. Climbing trees, balancing on horse yard rails and hanging upside down from the farm’s cattle crush. She is proudly a cast member of Chasing Smoke; the first all Indigenous professional circus show and has toured nationally with the show since its first performance in the 2017 Yirramboi Festival.
