Scott Rankin

Scott Rankin (born 1959) is an Australian theatre director, writer and co-founder and creative director of the arts and social change company Big hART.

Based in Tasmania, Rankin works in and with isolated communities and diverse cultural settings, as well as in commercial performance.

Rankin was born in 1959 in Sydney and grew up there.

His parents were businesspeople who owned an early learning specialist toyshop and lived on a Chinese junk in Lane Cove, moored in Sydney Harbour for 21 years.

Rankin enrolled in an arts degree but did not complete it, instead working in a retirement village and offering music workshops to homeless youth.

Since 1981, he has mainly lived and worked from the far north-west coast of Tasmania.

As creative director of Big hART and as playwright and director, Rankin has created or collaborated on many large-scale Australian stage productions: Namatjira for the Namatjira family; Ngapartji Ngapartji for Trevor Jamieson, Box the Pony for Leah Purcell; RiverlanD for Wesley Enoch; StickybrickS for the Northcott Public Housing community in Surry Hills, Sydney; Junk Theory for the Sutherland Shire, as well as internationally touring works such as Certified Male.

Rankin is a Fellow of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Rankin and his theatre works have received many awards, including:

His works have been included in many arts festivals, including Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Edinburgh, and the Tasmanian Ten Days on the Island Festival.

He has also toured to Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, England, South Africa, New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands.

List of Rankin's works: