HISTORY
Stalker was founded in 1985 in Auckland New Zealand.
The initial founders were David Clarkson, Rob McClaren and Bruce Naylor. Stalker in New Zealand made five works. It undertook several national tours and performed at Expo 88 in Brisbane, Australia.
Stalker was then reformed in late 1988 in Sydney Australia by Emily McCormick , David Clarkson and Rachael Swain. This trio forged the company with extensive national and international touring with their works Fast Ground, Toycart and Angles Ex Machina (1989 to 1996).
In 1996 Indigenous Choreographer Michael Leslie and the Festival of Perth approached Stalker to form a cross cultural company, Marrugeku. Its initial work was Mimi, directed by Rachel Swain. Rachel went on to significantly develop the company with Indigenous Broome based dancer and cultural leader, Dalisa Pigram.
For two decades Marrugekku was produced by Stalker and became a leading player in intercultural dance theatre. In 2016 Marrugekku became independent, officially separating from Stalker.
From the late 90’s to 2015 Stalker was led by Rachael and David, each making their own strands of work. In 1996 they worked on Blood Vessel together, directed by Rachel Swain.
Rachel created two of her own works for Stalker, Incognita (2002) and Shanghi LadyKiller (2010). She also directed several Marrugeku works over this period.
Meanwhile for Stalker, David directed Four Riders (2001), Red (2004), and MirrorMirror (2009). David also directed Flexion in 2007 for Wise Fool New Mexico, USA. In 2010 Stalker was theatre company in residence at the Bogota Iberoamericano Theatre Festival. With David Clarkson, a team of Stalker artists created works with four Colombian outdoor theatre companies for the festival.
David, with B Boy choreographer Nick Power made two Stalker works: Stiltbreak (2008) and Elevate (2010). Nick Power was made associate artist in David’s branch of Stalker, his final work with the company was Compartmentalize (2013). Nick has gone on to become an award winning choreographer.
David Clarkson then started investigating how to incorporate physical theatre with interactive technologies, which led him to collaborate with the Creativity and Cognition Studios at University of Technology, Sydney. With UTS artists, Andrew Johnson and Andrew Bluff, Stalker created Encoded (2012), Pixel Mountain, (Korea 2013) Phosphori (2013), Creature: Dot and the Kangaroo, Creature the Installation (2016) and Frameshift, (Korea 2016).
In 2015 David was awarded the Arts NSW Art and Technology Fellowship in recognition of this groundbreaking work and to allow him to further develop his work with interactive technology and theatre. From 2016 David Clarkson became the sole director of Stalker Theatre.