Noel Hodda
Writing produced includes the plays The Secret House (Griffin; Hole In The Wall; Playbox), Half Safe (RTC; Griffin), Photographs (CSU), On The Public Record (ECTC), Across The Water (Valley Artists) and Never a Moment’s Peace (ECTC) and for television episodes of the acclaimed ABC medical drama GP. In 2004 his play Later (now known as Across The Water) was invited to be workshopped at the prestigious Banff playRites Colony in Canada where it received universal praise from the selection committee. He was an assessor for Page to Stage, a young playwright’s program, for which he has also conducted playwriting and dramaturgy workshops. He is an assessor for Parnassus’ Den, a resource for Australian playwrights. He has also written numerous corporate and training videos for Optus Communications, State Rail and others. He was Dramaturge and Associate Director for the hugely successful Codgers by the now late Don Reid at Riverside Parramatta. Currently he is working on two new projects of his own and is writing the middle play in the Codgers trilogy at the request of Producer/Director Wayne Harrison and the partner of the late Don Reid, Fiona Press.
Adriano Cappelletta
Adriano is an actor, writer and theatre-maker based in Sydney. As a graduate of NIDA and Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, he has presented work throughout Australia, Europe and New York.
In Our Blood, a four-part musical drama series inspired by Australia’s radical response to AIDS in the early 1980s, and written by Adriano with Jane Allen and Jonathan Gavin, has just been produced by Hoodlum Entertainment and will air on ABCTV later this year.
Adriano is also known for his sketch comedy writing and in 2015 he created the comedy web series Ultimate Fanj, which premiered on ABC Iview as part of The Fresh Blood new comedy initiative. His sketch comedy #NewParents received over 100k views on Facebook in 4 days and appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise and The Daily Edition.
Adriano’s other work spans the full spectrum of theatre: cabaret, physical theatre, musicals, character comedy, stand-up, puppetry, improvisation, bouffon and clowning. Adriano creates work that is playful and satirical, touching on the pleasure and absurdity of life and communicating the magic and imagination of theatre.
In 2016, with fellow writers Holly Austin and Jo Turner, Adriano created Ruby’s Wish which premiered at Belvoir as part of their 2016 Season. As a collective they were awarded The 2016 Philip Parsons Playwriting Fellowship to create a new work, Paradise for production in 2019.
In 2016 his solo cabaret This Boy’s in Love was awarded First Runner Up Best Cabaret at Perth Fringe World, and in 2017 was awarded The Highly Commended Weekly Award at The Adelaide Fringe.
Individually and with Holly Austin he has created the hit comedy shows Cubbyhouse (The Public Theatre: New York, The Old Fitzroy, The Blue Room Theatre, Underbelly Arts Festival), Connie Chang’s Cabaret Roadshow (Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Comedy Festival, The Vanguard, The Great Escape Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival) and Shane and Eddie: Picking Up the Pieces (Edinburgh Fringe Festival)
Merlynn Tong
Merlynn Tong is a playwright, screenwriter and an actor. She was a resident writer of La Boite Theatre in 2022 and the 2020 resident writer of Melbourne Theatre Company. Some of her playwriting credits include Golden Blood (Griffin Theatre & Melbourne Theatre Company), Antigone (adaptation, Queensland Theatre & Mercury Theatre, UK), Good Grief (Queensland Theatre), Legends [of the Golden Arches] (co-writer, co-director, Black Swan Theatre Company), Caesar (co-writer, La Boite Theatre), Blue Bones (Playlab Productions), Come to Where I am (Critical Stages Touring & Paines Plough Theatre Company, UK), SKIN (Dear Australia, Playwriting Australia) and Ma Ma Ma Mad (Wax Lyrical).
Merlynn has screen projects in development with Jane Campion and Charles Wu.
Her one-woman-show Blue Bones by Playlab Productions, in which she also performed, has won 6 Matilda Awards including the Lord Mayor Award for Best New Australian Work, Best Mainstage Production and Best Female Actor in a Leading Role. She is also the prize recipient of Screen Queensland’s Stage to Screen pitch, The First 10 Pages 2.0. In 2023. Her work Golden Blood has been short-listed for a Victorian Premier Literary Award, NSW Premier’s Literary Award, as well as Sydney Theatre Award (Best New Australian Work).
Some of her performances include Golden Blood (Griffin Theatre/ Melbourne Theatre Company), Blue Bones (Playlab Productions), Enlightenment (Elbow Room), New Babylon (Brown’s Mart Theatre), White Pearl (Sydney Theatre Company & National Theatre of Parramatta), The Shot (Queensland Theatre, The Scene Project), Top of the Lake: China Girl (BBC & Sundance Films, Jane Campion), The Mathematics of Longing (La Boite Theatre), The Lost Lending Library (Punchdrunk & Imaginary Theatre), Hotelling (Bleached Arts), Bitch: Origin of the Female Species (Brisbane Festival), Viral (Shock Therapy Productions), Straight White Men (La Boite Theatre) and Hot Brown Honey (Judith Wright Centre).
Elise Greig
Elise’s first play, Crèche and Burn was a box office and critical success as part of La Boite Theatre’s 2005 mainhouse season and then received an extensive 10-week national tour. Her next play, The Sweet Science of Bruising, was shortlisted for the 2010 Playwriting Australia Festival. This was followed by Hopelessly Devoted, which was supported by RADF and culminated in a highly successful season at Glen Street Theatre, in Sydney, during 2014.
During 2015/2016 Elise co-wrote All Aboard!, a site-specific work for children, that was presented as part of Bleach* Festival 2016. As part of All Aboard! Elise had the pleasure of writing two songs – Things Move On and All Aboard! Elise has also written for cabaret. Are My Balls Still in the Air? was performed as part of the Brisbane Cabaret Festival 2004 and Mornings With Maryanne Merrily, for the 2006 Brisbane Cabaret Festival. Elise’s short play, Flood, was presented as part of Short+Sweet 2014.
Elise’s interest in writing was originally sparked as one of the actor/writers for the Channel 7 comedy pilot, 37 Skit Row. She then wrote the critically acclaimed Ditto, for La Boite’s Shock of the New Festival. This was followed by Elise’s one-woman show, The Romany Project, supported by Arts Queensland and The Australia Council, and presented as part of Metro’s Year of Independents 2004.
Elise’s current play, Magpie, is being developed as part of Playlab’s Lab Rats.
Elise Greig on AustralianPlays.org
Laura Jackson
Laura Jackson is a writer and performer with a passion for strong female roles and narratives.
As a playwright Laura’s work speaks to women’s experiences in the modern world, exploring topics like street harassment, domestic violence, online privacy and fertility.
Laura is a graduate of the prestigious three year BFA Acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) – class of 2018. Laura also has a BCA Performance, an MFA Creative Writing and a Dip Ed from the University of Wollongong.
Laura wrote and performed her one-woman play Handle It which has had seven seasons, touring the fringe circuit, and a UN Women charity performance. Her two-hander The Culture has had a Sydney Fringe season and performances as part of International Women’s Day events and has planned performances for 2022 and 2023 in NYC, New Zealand and Australia. During her time at NIDA Laura wrote and presented a reading of a new work Come On Baby, and is currently developing a new play called Speak Now exploring the same-sex marriage debate in Australia in 2017.
Laura collaborated with an illustrator to write Your Forever, a self published children’s book, and has several more in development, called Let Me Help and Out of the Nest. She is also polishing her first novel Keeping Score, booked in with an editor in January of 2022. Laura has recently completed the one year Australian Writers’ Centre Novel Writing course for the second time.
Laura is passionate about developing the skills of artists at all stages of their career. A trained musical theatre singer, Laura founded and directed a musical theatre company and created and directed cabaret performances. She brought in industry professionals such as American composer John Bucchino to run masterclasses and in the process, fostered local talent towards bigger and brighter careers.
During her time at NIDA Laura played leading roles, including Lucia (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Lady Fidget (The Country Wife), Willow (The Colbie Sisters of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) and Grusha (Caucasian Chalk Circle). Laura had the opportunity to work with a range of industry tutors including: Simon Bourke, Phillip Quast, Les Chantery, John Bell, Nigel Ubrihien, Caroline Kasper, Bethany Caputo, Chris King, Jennifer Peers, Robert Bertram, John Bucchino, Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Jennifer White, John Bashford, Katerina Moraitis, Andrew Ross, Gavin Robins and Kristine Landon-Smith.
Katrina Irawati Graham
Katrina is a screenwriter and playwright. She works in many genres including feminist horror, crime, drama and children’s stories.
Her Indonesian ghost story, White Song, is written from the ghost’s perspective. It is part of Australia’s first all-female directed horror anthology, Dark Whispers, (SBS On Demand). Raesita Grey, the feature film of that story, was developed through Screen Queensland’s IncuBAIT horror initiative.
Her supernatural play, Siti Rubiyah, is set in the jungles of Sumatra. It has been developed through the Playwriting Australia/Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) LOTUS program, has included support from Sydney Festival, STC’s First Draft and La Boite’s Highway program. Katrina has recently adapted Siti Rubiyah as a feature film script with funding from Screen Queensland. Katrina’s second play, Bi Empat, is a semi-autobiographical, magical realist play born during Playlab’s Incubator program and developed during LaBoite’s Highway festival.
She has written two online award-winning crime series: SCOUT (Best Mystery/Crime NY WebFest; Best Foreign Series Vancouver WebFest, screened ABC iView) and Crime and Justice which was embedded in University of Queensland’s MOOC The Psychology of Criminal Justice (Harvard/MIT’s EdX Award).
Mother Tongue is an antiracist midwifery drama online series developed through AFTRS Talent Camp and SBS Digital Originals.
Katrina has worked as a dramaturg for projects with Queensland Theatre and Playwriting Australia. She ran the writers’ room for Namaste Yoga as part of ABC/Screen Australia Kaleidoscope Project. She was also part of the writers’ room for SBS Digital Originals’ Chinese Malaysian horror webseries, Confinement.
Katrina taught screenwriting at QUT for fifteen years. She has been a selector on multiple film festival competitions including Betty Roland’s NSW Premiere’s Award prize for screenwriting.
Katrina is a co-founder and previous chair of Women in Film and Television (WIFT) Australia. She also serves on the WIFT International board representing six continents. She is Chair of Screen Queensland’s inaugural Equity and Diversity Taskforce. She celebrates her Indonesian-Australian heritage and champions diversity.
Liam Burke
Liam Burke was born and bred in Brisbane and made his professional debut with Queensland Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Gypsy. His performing career took him to London’s West End and Broadway where he was Creative Assistant to Susan Stroman. He went on to study Creative Writing at the State University of New York (Porter Leach Fellowship) and screenwriting at UCLA. He was Producer’s Assistant at Timeline Films (Los Angeles) and worked for The Mary Pickford Institute teaching film education to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Here he worked on documentaries about silent film stars and was assistant editor on The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (The Theda Bara story). As a journalist Liam has written for The Santa Barbara News Press, Standard-Examiner and Noozhawk to name a few. He has had poetry and short stories published in The James White Review and won first prize for his Spoken Word at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, NYC.
Liam’s stage play Goodbye Norma Jeane about the Hollywood dance maker Jack Cole received a Matilda Award nomination in 2014. His first play The Tall Poppies about Sir Robert Helpmann received at a reading at the Old Vic in London in 2010 and his television series Helpmann is based on this play. He also wrote Neptune’s which had success in short play festivals in Los Angeles, Melbourne and London and which was subsequently made into a short film (Official Selection Montreal Independent Film Festival and Best Shorts USA). Liam recently adapted and directed the Spanish romantic comedy Smiley for Brisbane Pride, written by playwright Guillem Clua, it is now a Netflix series.
Liam is a proud member and Queensland committee member of the Australian Writer’s Guild and a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild/AFTRA.
Waverley Stanley Jr.
Waverley is a Gumbaynggirr, Barunggam Birri Gubba man currently living in Brisbane. He has been an avid performer in the Brisbane poetry scene as well as acting in TV shows such as Cleverman and Harrow. He is an aspiring writer and playwright and in 2019 was apart of Playlab’s and QPAC’s emerging playwright program, Sparks as well as La Boite’s 2020 program, Assembly. He is writing for projects such as The Painters – the next great Australian comedy, and Project Coming Home – a limited series that tells the story of Rose, a stolen generations survivor tracing her roots back home.
Miranda Michalowski
Miranda Michalowski (she/her) is a multidisciplinary writer and performer living on Gadigal
land, in Sydney. She is passionate about telling queer and female-driven stories with humour and heart.
Miranda graduated with Honours in Theatre and Performance Studies from UNSW in 2022, having
completed her thesis on female coming-of-age representations in contemporary theatre.
In 2021, she was selected as one of 20 young writers from across Australia for the prestigious ATYP National Studio, where she met her current mentor, Lewis Treston.
Her coming-of-age play, Young Bodies/Somebody’s, debuted at Flight Path Theatre in 2022 and is published by Playlab Digitals. Her second play, Saturday Girls, was shortlisted for the 2022 Rodney Seaborn Playwright’s Award and will debut at Belvoir Downstairs in August 2023.
Miranda has additionally trained in comedy writing with Marcel Blanch De-Wilt, and has performed at comedy nights including ‘Yeah the Girls’.
She is currently developing a new dark comedy monologue, Macaroni and Dead Things, in collaboration with KXT Bakehouse’s Vault program, as well as developing a 30-min TV pilot adaptation of Saturday Girls.
Having worked as a notetaker with HardyWhite Pictures and observed rooms at Jungle Entertainment, Miranda is eager to develop her voice in the world of screen storytelling.