Photographer Ali Hughes

THE ACTORS

David Atfield graduated NIDA in 1991, before forming BITS Theatre in Canberra, directing such plays as Michael Gow’s ‘Furious’, for which he won a Canberra Critics Award. In 1998 David wrote ‘Lovely Louise’, about Louise Lovely, which was workshopped at the ANPC and produced at the Street. ‘Pink Triangles’, about Nazi crimes against homosexuals, followed, which he also directed at the Street. His production of his play ‘Scandalous Boy’, about Hadrian and Antinous, made the Canberra Times top five productions of 2014 and won David a second Canberra Critics Award. The script was short-listed for the Arch and Bruce Brown Award, New York, and published by Playlab. David’s new play ‘Exclusion’, about two feuding male politicians who fall in love with the same man, will be performed in 2018 at the Street.

Leah Pellinkhof (Ad Dip (Acting), BCA (Film & Television Production) JMC, MFA (Writing for Performance) NIDA,Grad Cert (Directing) AFTRS), is an writer, director, producer and performer of film and theatre. Her original productions have scored her many accolades for writing and directing including: The Works of William Shakespeare (BY CHICKS): Dell’Arte Award, Best play. My Pet Human: Matilda-award-nominated and Dell'Arte Award, favourite playwright. Chook and Maureen: Best Film,TAFF. Leah is also an experienced film and acting tutor (NIDA, STS, NYFA, AIM), a company director at Playhead Productions and is a board director at Queer Screen.

Michael Louis Kennedy is a young poet and playwright from Sydney, Australia. He is a graduate of UTS with a combined Bachelors in Journalism / Law. His works have been published in Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging and Transportation Press, and have been performed in both Sydney and Glasgow. He is a lover of dark comedy, horror and the beauty of Australian rural and urban landscapes. His work often explores parenthood; generational trauma and the intersection of politics and ego.

Grace Barnes originally comes from Scotland where her plays have been produced by the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, Theatre Workshop and the Traverse, all in Edinburgh, as well as the Citizens and Orah Mhor in Glasgow. She adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” for Pitlochry Festival Theatre and was Writer in Residence at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews. Grace has written the script for two musicals, “Crossing” and “Nevermore”, both of which premiered at Signature Theatre, Arlington, USA. Her book on women and musical theatre “Her Turn on Stage” is published in the USA by McFarland www.mcfarlandbooks.com

Felicity Nicol is an award-winning Performance Director and Artistic Director. A graduate of NIDA, she has gone on to work with some of the most prominent artists around the world, including Ontroerend Goed (BEL), Punchdrunk & Gecko Physical Theatre (UK), Illutron (DEN) and Mammalian Diving Reflex (CAN). Felicity holds a particular interest in working with young people, specifically queer young people & young people experiencing mental health issues. This interest has led her to working with Australian Theatre for Young People (AUS), Mit Ohnes Alles (GER), The Torontonians (CAN) and Company3 (UK). Felicity’s mission as an artist is to interrupt people’s assumptions about the world and the people we share it with in order to bring these assumptions into question. She does this through humour, debate, gaming dramaturgy and play. These take their forms through a combination of social media, projection, drag(dress-ups), physical theatre, dialogue and virtual reality technologies. Her career highlights include directing at The Sydney Opera House, creating a one-on-one performance for audiences in a moving car, and directing a non-verbal performative memorial via clowning, beer and a slide-show.

Julie’ Galvin' s early writerly aspirations were both dashed and buoyed by an accusation of plagiarism by her fifth-grade teacher. She writes best under pressure and if she’s doing her job right, you won’t always like her characters. She placed third with her story The Boys in the 2016 OutStanding Short Story competition and was longlisted for the 2017 Elizabeth Jolley Prize for her verse piece Treading Water. She hopes to spend 2018 ignoring the needs of her partner and two young children just enough to finish her verse novel, The Wash.

Adam Fawcett is an emerging playwright, fiction writer and theatre producer based in country Victoria. Sissy is his second play following Become The One, which was recently selected for the Playtime Staged Readings as part of 2018 Midsumma Festival. His most-recent fiction work, The Anniversary, was published by n-Scribe in 2017. He is creative producer at Lab Kelpie, a not-for-profit independent theatre company dedicated to new work by Australian playwrights and in 2016 produced the Green Room nominated show A Prudent Man (Katy Warner). In his own practice as a playwright and writer he chooses to prioritise queer stories.

Tamara Natt is fresh from her debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017 with her beat poetry play, ‘ALPHA’, Tamara is emerging as one of the most exciting new voices in Australian performance poetry and storytelling. A graduate of VCA in 2013, Tamara has worked extensively, both as an actor and writer in Australia, most recently performing in the Australian premiere of ‘Courage To Kill’, directed by Richard Murphet at Melbourne’s La Mama. Prior to Edinburgh, ALPHA’s Australian tour saw it sell-out at La Mama and Sydney’s Old Fitz Theatre, to critical and audience acclaim. Tamara is an outspoken queer rights activist and has a very special relationship with Margaret Court, following an open letter she wrote in 2017 which was published by several national news outlets, to her absolute delight.