Performances
Actress
My stage works have toured nationally and internationally with sold out seasons at Sydney Festival, Melbourne Comedy Festival, Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe, Hong Kong and Philadelphia. For screen I co-wrote and presented ‘Kate and Julia’ with Julia Zemiro appeared in sketch shows, tele movies, award-wining shorts and the odd soap.
Many years before I actually gave birth I featured in a multitude of TV commercials as the “Soccer Mum”, “Tired Mum” and “Quirky Mum” to sell a range of products from vitamins, to breakfast cereals, and cold and flu tablets to get us all through those pesky Winters.
Cabaret MC
I have hosted gala’s, cabarets, political fundraisers, conferences, music festivals, comedy nights, charities, and notably a conference about grass.
Yes. Grass. For farmers. It was a riot. As you can imagine. Don’t get me started on the time I hosted the grand opening of the new cattle yards or the new Woolworths Supermarket. Dark days. Dark days indeed.
Cabaret Kite
Kate has been MC and curator of Cabaret Kite at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre since 2007. Her slew of characters including Rusty Nails and Belle Farquhar are fearlessly entertaining, improvising, belting out tunes with the live band and interacting with audiences in their own special ways! Hugely popular, Cabaret Kite has become an institution with its blend of live music, physical theatre, stand-up and more from a fabulous array of emerging and established artists from the Central West and beyond.
Rusty Nails
Rusty Nails is bold, hilarious and a shameless flirt. Rusty loves nothing more than singing with her band, shimmying her way through life armed with razor sharp one-liners, jumpsuits and a vast array of wigs for all occasions. You will fall in love with her instantly.
Belle Farqhuar
Belle Farqhuar is a motivational speaker and real estate magnate from the Gold Coast. With a penchant for gold velour tracksuits and belting out power ballads, Belle’s straight-shooting life advice is inspirational and terrifying. You won’t be able to tear your eyes away from her and after an evening with Belle you will never be the same again
Bathurst Readers & Writers Festival 2020
In Conversation with novelist Tracy Sorensen
In Conversation with Alice Blackwood
“I’ve known Kate’s work for 25 years, and throughout her career she has produced and created live performances that are popular, humorous, tenderand highly accessible, innovative and original.”
Julian Louis Artistic Director NORPA
Past Performances
Smith and Fairley have collaborated together fourteen years and their ‘theatre’ marriage keeps audiences flocking back to their shows every time.Their uniquely Australian blend of comedic theatre pays homage to popular forms of theatre that entertain, provoke and delight drawing on vaudeville, slapstick, musical, cabaret, and physical characterisation.Mad-cap, plays combine, dance, song and witty word play concealing darker themes that commentate on the universal themes of love, desire, success, failure and the Aussie Dream to have it all. Unafraid to slaughter sacred cows, Smith and Fairley’s brave and skilful plays serve up versions of Australian culture that make us laugh, cry, cringe and crave for more. They have had the privilege to be produced by and to collaborate with some of the finest festival directors, independent theatre companies, touring companies and arts producers in the bizz. Their works have toured, been commissioned, opened festivals, travelled abroad and appeared in theatres, community halls, RSL clubs, large scale festivals and more.
Smith and Fairley Highlights
- 2017 ArtsOnTour Community Grant tour with SouthEastArts
- 2016 “Kidnapped’ invited to open Hunter Valley Theatre Festival & ‘Kidnapped” & 505 Theatre, Newtown
- 2016 ‘Beatches’ commissioned for Women In Theatre Festival- WITS The Eternity Playhouse
- 2012 – 2014 ‘Kidnapped’ awarded development funding by Local Stages at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre
- 2014 ‘Kidnapped’ premiered in the subscriber season at BMEC- sold out and shows added
- 2003 – 2009 ‘Bangers & Mash’, ‘The No Chance In Hell Hotel’- produced by Darlinghurst Theatre. Several return sold out seasons.
- 2006 – 2008 ‘The No Chance in Hell Hotel’ developed by Merrigong Theatre Company and programmed in BITE @ Seymour Centre
- 2004 ‘Bangers and Mash’ opened Philadelphia International Live Arts Festival.
- 2006 ‘Bangers and Mash’ invited to Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Fat Cat Productions, U.K and opened BITE@Seymour Centre
- 2005 – 2007 Invited to Hong Kong Fringe Theatre by Perilous Mouths Theatre Company, HK.
- 2007 ‘Bangers and Mash’ invited to Sydney Comedy Festival
- 2007 – 2009 Critical Stages NSW regional tours and ‘Bangers & Mash’ and ‘The No Chance In Hell Hotel’ translated into polish
Oh My God! I’ve Been Kidnapped And I Hate What I’m Wearing
By Drew Fairley
It’s 1965 and Sugar, our charming heroine, has a wardrobe Elizabeth Taylor would kill for. But her high-class threads are being unpicked by her two- timing user of a boyfriend, Buster.
Betrayal, theft, humiliation, chest hairs in the soap and a hobbling cabaret career push her to the edge.
So she packs a pistol into her adorable clutch, guns that two-timing rat down, fires up her Holden HD and makes for the outback with police sirens at her stiletto heels.
Somewhere deep in the bush, far from the maddening crowd, she meets a creature and a dress that will change her life… forever.
Aussie pulp fiction meets Hitchcock, hihg-camp cabaret, noir horror and 1960’s glamour, ‘Kidnapped’ is an hilarious sequins and gaffer tape backstage comedy- with great songs, great outfits and one helluva twist!
Bangers & Mash
By Smith & Fairley
Director: Chris Baker
Design: Leonie Evan
Lighting Design: Luiz Pamphola
An hilarious comedy with a splash of melodrama, a heap of sitcom, lashings of slapstick, a dash of horror, and buckets of comedy. With breathtaking choreography, a song or two and deftly delivered one-liners, Bangers and Mash will leave you wanting to fall in love all over again.
Meet Bart, a cad and a womaniser who answers a share house ad and moves in with Mash; she’s single, likes Barbara Streisand and has a broken heart. Watch as they grapple with that certain romantic chemistry, forbidden between housemates. What do you do? Do you make a move… or do you move out?
Voted one of the Best Independent Productions by the Sun Herald.
“performers Fairley and Smith – think of them as funnier versions of Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan” –
Sun Herald.
The No Chance In Hell Hotel
By Smith & Fairley
Director: Jo Turner
Design: Leonie Evans
Sound Design: Ross Johnston
Set on the mean streets of Sydney, The No Chance in Hell lampoons the ‘who dun’nit’ crime genre. There’s a Rookie on the case and jaded Boss, a missing gal and some questionable puns, Add in some hilarious song and dance routines and there you have Smith and Fairley’s latest highly original creation.
Diane Spencer is a lovely but lonely woman struggling to keep her place- Di’s Bar open in The Cross, when along comes Jack- an ex alcoholic, ex-advertising jingle writer who takes the job as the new barman at Di’s bar.
Chemistry happens, opposites attract and just when these two look like getting together, Diane is kidnapped by a mysterious Sydney underworld figure. The cops are soon hard on the case. But who would do such a thing?
“Hilarious terrific, crowd-pleasing entertainment” –
The Sydney Morning Herald
Beatches
Devised by Smith and Fairley, Liesel Badorrek, Annette Twemlow
Design: Annette Twemlow
Sound Design: Ross Johnston
Buffon clown, song, and whip smart satire, set BEATCHES apart as darkly funny exploration of the representation of women in film…on stage…
This surreal piece lampoons female archetypes-crones, witches and ingénues, crucifying and celebrating the so-called ‘chick flick’ genre.
Evoking famous ‘warring’ duos like Midler and Hershey from the saccharine “Beaches”, and Crawford and Davis from the macabre “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’, BEATCHES shamelessly subverts notions of power, beauty, ageing and ambition in this risqué romp, designed to get your toes tapping, your sides splitting and your mind bending
The No Chance In Hell Hotel
by Smith & Fairley
Director: Annabel Scholes
Music & Lyrics: Phil Scott
Design: Kate Shanahan
Lighting: Ross Graham
Sound Design: Michael Huxley
Matt and Bec have been married for seven years … He wants a raise. She wants her cushions fluffed. He keeps fingering his car keys. She spends hours staring into the back yard longing for a new deck.
So what if Matt occasionally sleeps in the car and Bec has trouble remembering his name? It’s just a phase. Once they get their bank loan, a timber deck and a heated infinity pool all their little grievances will disappear. But if they don’t get that loan they’ll do what any other normal Australian couple would do – have a nervous breakdown and sing about it.
“… a punchy script, thick with one liners and deliciously dark undercurrents”
Performing Arts Hub