Astrid Pill worked with Restless Dance Theatre as a performer, workshop leader and community arts director for 10 years, in what was a formative experience in collaborative theatre making. She recently re-joined Restless as a performer on Shifting Perspectives for the Illuminate Adelaide and Vivid Sydney Festivals. 

For Patch Theatre Company Astrid co-created award-winning shows Me & My Shadow, Mr Magee and the Biting Flea and Emily Loves to Bounce and performed in Superluminal for Illuminate Adelaide.

Pill sings and studied for many years with Robert Dawe. She notably sang for The New Pollutants re-score of Metropolis (2 x Adelaide Film Festival, Next Wave/ACMI, Dark MoFo, Sydney Opera House and Fed. Square 2021). She also performed a solo show, Easy Ryder by Fiona Sprott for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, directed by Daisy Brown.

Throughout her career, Pill has collaborated and performed with Brand X, The Border Project, Sarah Neville, Maude Davey, Vitalstatistix, Windmill Theatre, Polyglot, IHOS Opera, State Theatre SA, Art Bomb/Dream Big, Tutti Arts and Brink Productions.

For her production Cake, which she wrote, toured and adapted for ABC’s airplay, Pill won an Adelaide Critics Circle Award, a Fringe Award, and two Adelaide Advertiser Ozcars. Pill was also the recipient of an Arts South Australia Emerging Artist Scholarship enabling her to study voice and physical theatre in France and Poland.

Pill formed the company Ladykillers with Ingrid Voorendt, Zoë Barry and Gaelle Mellis, creating works including Cake, Lullaby and The Pyjama Girl. More recently, Voorendt, Barry and Pill were joined by Renate Henschke, Jason Sweeney and Sue Grey-Gardner to create I Hide in Bathrooms which premiered to critical acclaim at the Adelaide Festival 2024. 

Pill is currently undertaking an Arts South Australia fellowship to further develop her contemporary writing practise. Pill is also in early development of a new work Peter Out, the Obsolete, exploring disposable culture, frailty, obsolescence and abandonment, which was seeded during a residency at The Mill, Adelaide. 

Photo credit: Diana Stenta