Creatrix Tiara is the kind of person who turns a joke into an opportunity. They refer to it as “jokefesting”— manifesting something silly into something very real.
All their pursuits fall under the category of “shenanigans.” They’re whimsy, energetic, spontaneous. They’re a performer, writer, and producer from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, now living in Melbourne, Australia, having studied abroad in Brisbane.
To this day, Creatrix remains a certified Savage Garden fangirl, an Australian pop duo based in Brisbane, and the main reason they would choose the city as their eventual study abroad location. They would even spend their days writing fan fiction for the fandom — though, Creatrix had spent most of their days just writing, since young.
They were also a lover of radio and television. Johor Bahru sits on the border of Singapore, so they would have access to old Singaporean radio stations. They would grow up watching MTV and Channel [V], and even got to call in on the show “By Demand,” a music video request programme.
“You see people live streaming on Twitch, on YouTube. It was almost a precursor to that, just on television,” says Creatrix. “I said, ‘I would like to request [Savage Garden], I’m having a bad day.’ They called me on the show, and I fell in love.”
Anything they fell in love with back then, they would make a website for. “I was very online since I was 9,” they added. “When the Internet first came to Malaysia, I was there — I left for one year to do UPSR — then I just never left again.”
People seek a platform in which they can express what they love, and that’s what Creatrix aims to build today. Source: Creatrix Tiara
Creatrix fell into an age they coined as the “early 2000s teen girl Internet,” where many in their demographic would express their passions through developing basic websites. Before blogs were a thing, people had online diaries and fan sites, the platform in which Creatrix would share their Savage Garden fan fiction.
After moving to Australia and earning a Bachelor of Creative Industries from the Queensland University of Technology, much of Creatrix’s career began on-stage. Their work as a director, producer, writer, and multimedia artist were driven by their identity: the Queer Lady Magician, a queer, non-colonial take on stage magic; burlesque dancing; Yoni Ki Baat, a South Asian women’s theatre production — you name it.
But lately, the scene’s changed.
“Something I just found really frustrating about the live performance art was that a lot of them are just very tech phobic. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s online, it’s not people on a stage, bodies in a space, therefore it doesn’t matter as much,’” they said. “Then we had the lockdown — Victoria had the longest lockdowns of anywhere in the world. And so, a lot of people who still wanted to make theatre had to learn how to get online quickly.”
Today, Creatrix’s career has shifted from on-stage performance to forming “hybrid worlds” that connect communities through physical and digital means. They just didn’t realise how much of an influence their teenage loves would offer through the process.
Creatrix giving a handshake to Mr. Monopoly at a Monopoly Dreams interactive space in Melbourne Central. Source: Creatrix Tiara
Turning fandoms into a rapt audience
Creatrix’s most recent “shenanigan” is to produce a live stage adaptation of The Great Ace Attorney, an adventure game set in the Victorian era. It’s a tough process, getting it off the ground, especially when it comes to licensing. The game already has Japanese stage productions, but none in English.
While it’s been years since Creatrix called into Channel [V] to request for Savage Garden, their fandom habits haven’t waned one bit. Creatrix is a connoisseur of both the performing arts and video games, and they’ve found a way to merge the two worlds.
“My main project during lockdown was a Fringe Festival on Animal Crossing,” they said. “And that was because I saw lots of people who used Animal Crossing: New Horizons as an event theme. Someone did a whole talk show on it, people did fashion shows, and protest rallies. It was such a big avenue for creativity, and it really saved my life.”
The festival took the shape of a 12-hour livestream where people would attend via Zoom, talk about Animal Crossing, and witness all forms of art: music, a variety show, music, poetry, storytelling, and interviews of people who worked in marine conservation. It allowed Creatrix to exercise their skills as an artistic director and proved that digital can be an excellent platform for theatre, so long as you give it a chance.
Creatrix’s avatar at the dedicated Animal Crossing Fringe Festival island in 2020. Source: Creatrix Tiara
After the lockdown, Creatrix brought the soundtrack of Genshin Impact — an anime-style, role-playing game developed by Hoyoverse — to the orchestra in Australia. The game hosts the “Impact4Music” programme, which provides free access to sheet music for the soundtrack and seed funding for local orchestras.
That is unheard of when it comes to video games, and that’s why Creatrix wanted to take full advantage of it: to bring a piece of Genshin Impact to a country where fans are left starved for content. A lot of merging video games and performing arts together is influenced by fandom culture, and that, Creatrix is very familiar with.
After all, they did create an entire website dedicated to their favourite musician.
“It’s the fans that would follow the story wherever they go,” they said. “If it’s a TV show, they will watch it. If it’s a stage play, they would go see it, if it’s an immersive thing at a cafe, they will go. And so that energy is what I’m looking back into and just drawing from. People are passionate. People want to show what they love.”
