Authenticity & Identity on the
Australian Stage

Chris Hay is Professor of Drama at Flinders University, a position he took up in October 2022 after previous appointments at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the University of Queensland (UQ). He is an Australian theatre and cultural historian, whose work examines funded cultural output for what it can tell us about national anxieties and preoccupations. His new co-authored book in this area, Contemporary Australian Playwriting: Re-visioning the Nation on the Mainstage, has just been published.

Chris currently holds a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council for his project on the origins of live performance subsidy in Australia between 1949 and 1975. A major output of that project is the Shadow Canon Collection, an online resource collecting unpublished Australian plays and making them available to performers and researchers to deepen engagement with our national theatre history, which will go live in 2023.

As a director, Chris is particularly interested in German Modernism. His recent work directing students includes Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening in his own translation, and Max Frisch’s The Arsonists at UQ. He works with the intracultural acting methodology pioneered by Kristine Landon-Smith, in a collaboration they began at NIDA. Their co-authored acting manual, Embedding Diversity in Performer Training, is forthcoming in 2023.

Gaelle is an Award winning designer, collaborator, thought leader, and a highly sought-after disability advocate and consultant.

A proud disabled woman she is driven to create cultural change by daring to raise expectations within the realms of disability and diversity. 

She has been working as a theatre designer and collaborator in Australia and overseas or over 25 years. Her designs have toured to the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, New Zealand and the United States.

Seen as a cultural leader within both the disability arts and mainstream arts sectors, Gaelle was one of 50 people globally invited to attend the International Convening of Thought Leaders  run by the Kennedy Centre,  Washington DC. Invited by the Theatre Board of the Australia Council as one of 15 women filmed for the Woman in Theatre exhibition that celebrated the fabulous women of the contemporary Australian theatre scene. Gaelle’s outstanding and sustained contribution to the arts was most recently recognised with the Geoff Crowhurst Memorial Award at the 2020 Ruby Awards, which honour the best of South Australia’s arts and culture sector, and with the prestigious 2020 Australia Council National Arts and Disability Award for an Established Artist.

Gaelle is the Creative Director of Tutti Arts & gaellemellis.com

Nescha graduated from the Flinders University Drama Centre in 2010. She is a co-founder and member of RUMPUS and one half of theatre company Tiny Bricks. For the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Nescha has directed Single Asian Female, Euphoria (co-pro with Country Arts SA), Jasper Jones, Terrestrial, Switzerland, Straight White Men (co-pro with La Boite), Gorgon, Volpone, Krapp’s Last Tape in the ‘Beckett Triptych’ (2015 Adelaide Festival, 2016 MOFO), Othello, Jesikah and Random. Other directing credits include How to Kill Your Husband (State Opera South Australia), Meet Me At Dawn (Gavin Roach Productions), Yerma (Foul Play), Sepia (RiAus/Emily Steel), Hamlet (Actors Folio), Alice and Peter Grow Up (Milk Theatre Collective), As One (Tiny Bricks) and Deluge (Tiny Bricks in association with Brink for the 2016 Adelaide Festival).

Carissa is a Noongar woman born on Wemba-Wemba country who is an actor, writer, and editor. Since graduating from Flinders University in 2010, Carissa has featured in productions with Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, and Ilbijerri Theatre Company. Her on-screen work includes the SammyJ Show, Treaty Victoria's 'Deadly Questions' Campaign and House Husbands. She is also currently the Health and First Nations Editor at The Conversation, editor for Indigenous X and is completing her PhD in Indigenous arts and cultures.