Dr. Margi Brown Ash (also known as MBA) is a theatre maker, researcher, psychotherapist (specializing in creative arts and collaborative therapies), and group facilitator. She joined Actors Equity in 1977, commencing her career in Sydney with a 6-month season of her solo show Alison Mary Fagan by David Selbourne at Ensemble Theatre, which then moved to the Stables Theatre for the first ever Sydney Festival. At the same time, she was given a sustaining role (Shanie) in Australia’s first soapie, Number 96. After that, she worked with Australia Theatre for Young People, touring New South Wales before moving to New York in 1978 to train with Stella Adler and Polish mime Stefan Niedzialkowski. While in NYC, she performed Off-Off and Off-Broadway, including the renowned Actor’s Studio.

Upon her return from New York, she worked as Arts Co-ordinator for one-teacher schools in outback NSW; as a Full Company Member at the NSW Theatre of the Deaf; as a Full Company Member at Murray River Performing Group; as a Mime Teacher Ensemble Studios; as a guest director at Rae Gibson Mime, Perth; as a guest director at SWY Theatre Company, Perth and as a guest director at Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, Perth.

Since moving to Brisbane with her partner Bill to raise their four children, MBA has worked with the city’s major theatre companies including Queensland Theatre (Company), La Boite, The Nest Ensemble, Zen Zen Zo, Danger Ensemble, Frank Theatre, Green, Lucky Hearts, The Good Room, Grin & Tonic Theatre Troupe, and has directed shows at Griffith University, Metro Arts, La Boite, Queensland Academy of Creative Industries, and Queensland University of Technology.

MBA is a Mentor with 4change coaching & counselling, her own creative art studio where she conducts supervision, workshops, and private sessions with artists and community workers adjusting to life, work, and creative transitions. She employs a collaborative, narrative, and experiential arts framework to help artists and organisations re-script their approaches to work and living. MBA created the RICC, or Relational Impulse Cultural Collaborative Process, a postmodern arts training program that emerged from her award-winning Ph.D. research House of Homes (2017). MBA uses sections of the RICC process when she facilitates the actors’ process, specifically Rituals of Practice, a framework for artists to succeed and thrive. Each year she is invited to teach the Acting Students at QUT Creative Industries the frameworks of RICC to ensure a culture of cooperation, collaboration, and creativity.

MBA left her position in Academia after she was invited to be one of three nationally-recognized artists to participate in the year-long Process Project at Metro Arts. This profound experience encouraged MBA to resign from her position as lecturer and subject co-ordinator of the Master of Counselling course and return to the theatre to write, devise, and perform original contemporary performances as well as mentoring and coaching artists both nationally and internationally.

From 2010 and 2018 MBA focused on The Belonging Trilogy (HOME, EVE and He Dreamed a Train), three original works that explored the notion of home and belonging. The multi-award-winning HOME engaged in repeat seasons, one at La Boite followed a few years later by a season at Queensland Theatre Company HOME program and HOME Review . Multi-award-winning EVE also had several seasons, at Metro Arts Brisbane and The Blue Room Perth Eve Review as did the multi-award-winning He Dreamed A Train He Dreamed a Train review at Brisbane Powerhouse (2012, 2017).

Pre-Covid, Margi regularly presented at conferences in USA and Mexico with organizations associated with Taos Institute, an international research community focusing on Social Construction and Collaborative ways of working therapeutically. Margi is a Taos Associate and is often invited to create a performative response to the conferences she attends, as well as presenting collaborative workshops related to the Conference Themes.

Margi has presented performative papers at various Theatre of the Oppressed Conferences in the USA, performing excerpts of her plays. She weaves her plays throughout the workshops, providing an opportunity for participants to experience their own poetic journey to belonging.

Just before COVID broke, MBA presented at the Communication and the Arts Conference, both in Montreal and Sydney, introducing creative practices to enhance work performance.

On several occasions, MBA facilitated a live-in residency at Arteles Creative Center in Finland, (called New Course) where she presented her RICC Process to a host of international artists, guiding the participants in a month-long arts practice. In 2022, while hosting the Arteles Artists, MBA presented the Opening Keynote by Zoom for Drama Queensland.

When not coaching, speaking, or writing, MBA performs in new works with Brisbane’s mainstage theatre companies: the multi-award-winning The Wider Earth at Queensland Theatre (2016) Program and Sydney Festival (Sydney Opera House, 2018), the highly acclaimed Prize Fighter at La Boite and Belvoir Street Sydney (2015, 2017, touring nationally 2018) Prize Fighter Program and most recently, days before our first Pandemic Lockdown, That’s What She Said (2020), the final performance at the old Metro Arts Building in Brisbane city, produced and directed by The Good Room with Metro Arts Review for That's What She Said.

Since the world has been experiencing the Covid Pandemic, MBA’s focus has been, by necessity, on creating innovative Zoom workshops. She has devised a way of being in the Zoom Room that is both intimate and impactful. She limits the number of participants in each workshop to four or five and encourages generative conversations amongst the participants as they create and re-create new pathways forward using multimodal arts practices. The emphasis is on Group Dynamic and Group Process.

In September 2023, Margi began her journey into Contemplative Psychology, enrolling at Nalanda Institute, based in NYC. This is a three-year sojourn, beginning with a one-year submersion into Meditation and Buddhist Principles.

Motivated by the learnings, Margi began to offer the community free early morning meditation sessions for individuals and small groups.

One of MBA’s greatest loves is mentoring artists. She employs a creative process she calls Collaborative Mentoring, a way of being with her mentees on an equal footing, while engaging in creative, collaborative, and constructionist frameworks that empower, and enrich the mentees’ professional and personal lives.

MBA values the importance and necessity of professional development and each year she finds ways to enrich her practice, particularly in relation to writing, collaborating, and yoga, with an emphasis on meditation and pranayama.

Margi is also a grandmother, one of her most treasured roles, and spends time in Sydney playing, creating, and walking with her grandchildren when not mentoring or teaching artists.

To see more of Margi’s achievements, memberships, and qualifications, you can visit her CV via the link below.