Robyn Archer
| Robyn Archer | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Robyn Smith |
| Born | 1948 (age 68–69) Prospect |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter, festival director |
| Website | robynarcher |
Robyn Archer, AO, CdOAL (born 1948) is an Australian singer, writer, stage and director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.
Archer was born Robyn Smith in Prospect, South Australia. She began singing at the age of four years and singing professionally from the age of 12 years, everything from folk and pop and graduating to blues, rock, jazz and cabaret. She graduated from Adelaide University and immediately took up a full-time singing career. Archer has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours English) and Diploma of Education from Adelaide University.
Archer is openly gay.
In 1974 she sang Annie I in the Australian premiere of Brecht/Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins to open The Space of the Adelaide Festival Centre. She subsequently played Jenny in Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera for New Opera South Australia where she met English translator and editor John Willett. Since then her name has been linked particularly with the German cabaret songs of Weill, Eisler, and Paul Dessau and others from the Weimar Republic, a repertoire which Willett guided her to.
Her one-woman cabaret A Star is Torn (1979) covering various female singers including Billie Holiday and her 1981 show The Pack of Women both became successful books and recordings, the latter also being produced for television in 1986. She played A Star is Torn throughout Australia from 1979 to 1983, and for a year at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End.
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