Stars align for couple's stage debut

04/02/2025 | 3 mins

A husband-and-wife team from The University of Western Australia will be centre stage for an epic performance and live exhibition as part of this year’s Perth Festival.

Dr David Gozzard, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, and Forrest Fellow Dr Fiona Panther, from UWA’s School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing, will be taking part in 12 Last Songs.

The performance, at the Heath Ledger Theatre in Northbridge on Saturday February 15 from 12 noon to 12 midnight, explores how we work, live and spend our time.

Forrest Fellow Dr Fiona Panther and Dr David GozzardImage: Forrest Fellow Dr Fiona Panther and Dr David Gozzard.

Dr Gozzard is an experimental physicist developing telescopes for space exploration and Dr Panther is an astronomer and astrophysicist who searches for gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime created by merging black holes and neutron stars.

“I did a little bit of theatre in high school but something like this is freer flowing and outside anything I’ve done before,” Perth-raised Dr Gozzard says.

Dr Panther, who grew up in the north-east of England before moving to New Zealand at 15 years of age, has a little more experience with live performance. 

"I was involved in traditional folk music for most of my childhood, and performing was a thing we did every other Saturday,” Dr Panther says.

“I played piano, clarinet, double bass and accordion — music performance has been a real constant for me.”

The couple received an email from the Forrest Foundation sent on behalf of Perth Festival looking for expressions of interest from an astrophysicist to take part and decided to apply — they believe the novelty of being a husband-and-wife team may have got them the gig.

A diverse array of people from Perth will turn up to perform “shifts” for the audience during the 12-hour performance of 12 Last Songs.

Over an hour-long shift running from 10pm to 11pm, Dr Gozzard and Dr Panther will explain the evolution of the universe.

Although they regularly deliver presentations at conferences they have never presented together but, if history is anything to go by, live talks seem to be a good omen for the pair.

“We met after I had watched Fiona give a presentation and my pick-up line was ‘Hi, I liked your talk!’,” Dr Gozzard laughs.

That first meeting was in 2016, they have now been married for more than two years and have a daughter together.

“I found someone who's quite well matched with me in their openness to answering questions and in their ability to articulate what they're thinking in real time,” Dr Panther explains.

Their ability to communicate will be put under the spotlight when they answer questions on the night including some from 300 set questions determined before any of the 30 presentations begin.

“I'm really curious to see what that dynamics will be like, because in a sense we're very similar and it's going to be interesting to see whether that plays well on stage,” Dr Panther says.

For more information visit the Perth Festival website.



Media references

Annelies Gartner (UWA PR & Media Adviser) 08 6488 6876


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