Umbrella Event: Emergence 2022

Hira Direen

Hera Direen is an award winning cabaret performer and producer here in lutruwita. They have under their belt the 2019 Artfully Queer Unifying Voice award, the 2020 30 under 30 Community Champion, (And in a past life the 2015 Mr. Boylesque Tasmania king).

Producer of QT Cabaret Hera has years of experience creating costumes on the fly, giving a dingey pub a queer neo classical make over, and furthering the gay agenda with their scripts; Zeb A Gender Odyssey (produced by Tasmania Performs), and RATTLE (Self produced).

They are currently studying an MFA in Cultural Leadership at NIDA, and hope to one day be happy.

Emma Field

Emma is an accordionist and classically trained pianist with a love of French film music, chanson, musette, and tango styles. Having trained in the UK, she has accompanied divas, folk bands, and theatre productions in London – along with weddings in Italy and France. She now enjoys playing in all-female performance ensemble Miettes.

Sasha Gavlek

Sasha Gavlek is a contemporary bassist hailing from Hobart, with a love for alternative jazz and rhythmic experimentation, alongside a passion for exchanging culture and musical knowledge between fellow peers and audience members.

Edith Perrenot

Edith Perrenot  is an interdisciplinary artist of visual, performing and musical art as well as an emerging writer for performance. Here she navigates between french repertoire and theatrical experiments. Performing using voice as an instrument and building fictional characters to share feelings and vignettes-like narratives.

Julia Drouhin

Julia Drouhin is an artist and curator working with field recordings, water based instruments, electromagnetic frequencies, dice, rope, textile and edible objects to embody invisible soundstream that reveal friction in sociality and shift usual modes of transmission.

Svetlana Bunic

An adept accordionist, composer, musical director and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, bass, ukulele, programming, percussion), Svetlana’s music has framed live international circus theatre, underscored film and thrilled audiences worldwide in a kaleidoscope of exotic music ensembles.

Maude Davey
Maude Davey has worked as an actor, director and writer in Melbourne for more than thirty-five years, with her primary focus being the creation of new work. Recent acting work includes: K-BOX, by Ra Chapman for Malthouse Theatre; Set Piece by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall for Rising Festival; The Heartbreak Choir, by Aidan Fennessey for MTC; Anthem for Arts Centre Melbourne at the Melbourne, Sydney and Perth Festivals.

She has worked extensively in variety, as member of Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box/Burlesque Hour ensemble and directed the acclaimed Gender Euphoria, presented by Melbourne Festival 2019. Television appearances include The News Reader, Sisters, Offspring, Tangle, Summer Heights High, Five Bedrooms, The Newsreader, and films include My Year Without Sex, Noise and Ride Like A Girl. She has also been the Artistic Director of two small theatre companies (Vitalstatistix Theatre Company in Adelaide and Melbourne Workers Theatre). She won a Green Room Award for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role for her work in Melancholia by Declan Greene, (Malthouse Theatre, 2018). Her directing credits include Clare Barron’s Dance Nation for Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre; KillJoy with the laserbeanz and Fish for the Rollercoaster Ensemble. She received a Masters in Writing for Performance from VCA in 2016. She is currently a PhD candidate at La Trobe University, investigating queer short form variety performance.

Rowan Harris 

Rowan Harris has created a number of long-form improvisation show formats including ‘The Holey Book’,  ‘Sciprov’, ‘The Chair’ and ‘MomentUs’ as well as founding the first Long-Form and Narrative improvisation ensemble in Tasmania, ‘Imprognosis’. Some of his favourite shows performing alongside international improvisors have been ‘Close To You’ by Rama Nicholas, ‘The Long Weekend’ by Christine Brooks and ‘In a New York Minute’ by Glenn Hall.   More recent work includes performances for the Burning Desire Festival, Underground ArtsBar, Theatresports and for Science Week.  Rowan was a member of the Danger Academy ensemble for a number of years and performed at the Marion Bay Falls Festival.

Matt Wilson

Matt Wilson has worked for over 25 years as an improvisor, actor, and director. He has performed with companies such as Terrapin, Tas Theatre Company, Blue Cow and Round Earth. As an improvisor he has been seen in The Underground ArtsBar, Theatresports, science week Impro, and Imprognosis’ The Holey Book, as well as his long-standing prize-winning work with Rowan Harris in the duo Harris and Tweed. He can also be seen in the film clip to A. Swayze and the Ghosts Mess of Me and briefly in the feature film Van Diemens Land.

Andrew Morrisby

Andrew Morrisby is a pianist, award winning musical director, choral director, arranger, and tutor based in Hobart, Tasmania. He studied at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, completing a Bachelor Degree under the tutelage of Beryl Sedivka. As a student, he performed as a soloist in the Tasmanian Messiaen Festival (2008), and with the Derwent Symphony Orchestra playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. He has also played as an orchestral keyboardist with the Tasmanian Discovery Orchestra and Derwent Valley Concert Band.

Andrew is heavily involved with the musical theatre community, having worked as a musical director, conductor, repetiteur, and pit orchestral musician for a number of Tasmanian theatre companies. He was a member of the winning ensemble, “Blush Opera” at the Tasmanian Cabaret Festival in 2014, and is a recipient of the Tasmanian Theatre Awards for Musical Direction in “Forbidden Broadway” (Hobart Rep 2015), and Best Ensemble for “[Title of Show]” (Old Nick Theatre Co 2019). Andrew has credits for vocal arrangements on the new work “Euphrasia, The Musical” (The Actors Studio, Kuala Lumpur 2019) in a collaboration with composer Mia Palencia.

More recently, Andrew has been busy post-covid as Musical Director for “Shane Warne the Musical” (The Cabaret Club) and “The Old Man and the Old Moon” (Jack Lark Presents), as a guest conductor for the Tasmanian Youth Orchestra Sinfonietta, co-directing vocal group “Tonic”, as accompanist for the Southern Gospel Choir, performing with original rock band “Gabe and the Dagrezios”, original funk/fusion band “Solace”, and as a member of the long-form theatrical improvisation group “The Practitioners of the Ephemeral Arts”.

Andrew works as a private teacher, tutor, and accompanist in Hobart.

Natalie Venettacci

Natalie is a proud Tasmanian creative and a graduate from Actors Centre Australia. She recently toured internationally with Terrapin’s Red Racing Hood. Natalie also toured with Poetry In Action around Australia and recently produced a performance art piece through UTAS at Dark Mofo called Touch Me if you Trust Me. Acting credits include As You Like it and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Directions Theatre, One Man Two Guvnors and Hamlet for Old Nick, O – The Tragedy of Ophelia for Andy Aisbett, and Dot Dot Dot for The Old 505. You might find her on Saturday’s at Salamanca Market roaming as a Covid Buster for Terrapin Puppet Theatre.

Simone Dobber

After a long-short hiatus, Simone is thrilled to be back performing Imprognosis alongside some of Tassie’s finest. Her pre-covid credits include As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing with Directions Theatre, Chicago with Bijou Creative, How to Hold Your Breath and Those Who Fall in Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor with Loud Mouth Theatre Company. Her screen credits include Rosehaven in 2016 and 2017 and The Magnetism of Us with Acute Brow Productions. She has also co-written, costume designed, acted and composed music for Mermaid and the City with Beauty and the Bitches.

Carrie Maclean

Carrie is a writer, actor, director and mother of four. She is a founding member of Mudlark Theatre and the Radio Gothic collective. Since graduating from UTAS with a BPA, Carrie has had numerous performing roles onstage and onscreen, with her debut in a feature role as Ann Solomon in The First Fagin (2012). As a writer, Carrie has several projects in development, including a television drama series for Aquarius Films and Pistachio Pictures and Mental, the Mother Load, a documentary theatre performance exploring the grotesque nature and beauty of motherhood.

Jeff Michel

Jeff is a performer, puppeteer, and theatre teacher who moved to Tasmania in 2005.  He is the chair of Big Monkey Theatre Inc. and a co-founder of Blue Cow Theatre. Credits include: TTC’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Rowan and the 2012 Helpmann Award winning BOATS for Terrapin.  His solo show, Pedalling Back, was developed with Peter Matheson, produced by Blue Cow, and toured by Tasmania Performs in 2016.

Rosemary Cann
Rosemary Cann is a pākehā writer, musician and actor based in nipaluna, who has previously performed as a member of Wellington-based improv troupes Playshop, and Definitely Not Witches. Rosemary has participated in multiple playwriting residencies, including Carclew’s Writing Place, Blue Cow Theatre’s Future Proofing the Page and Tarraleah Residency, and ATYP’s National Studio and Fresh Ink Mentorship Program. She has performed in local productions Eurydice, HerStory (2019-2020), The Campaign (2018) and CRAVE (2021). Rosemary is passionate about representative, intelligent art that touches audiences and brings queer and feminine narratives to the forefront. Rosemary holds a BA in Theatre, English Literature and Anthropology, and a Masters in Creative Writing.

Emma Skalicky

Emma Skalicky has worked in Hobart theatre since 2014. Highlights include Shakespeare in the Gardens productions from 2016-2021; Loud Mouth Theatre Company’s Hamlet: Heads or Tails (2014) and The Island of Doctor Moreau (2016); Theatre with Teeth’s Buckets (2017); PLoT Theatre’s Eurydice (2018) and Deadly (2019); and The Theatre Closet’s Crave (2021). She has directed Bad Company Theatre’s Picnic At Hanging Rock (2019); PLoT Theatre’s Doctor Faustus (2017) and Salome (2020); and assistant directed Loud Mouth Theatre Company’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (2016) and Archipelago Production’s The Bleeding Tree (2020).  Previous works include Ophelia: A Decomposition in Two Parts (The Picton Grange Quarterly Review, Issue 6), Panopticon for ATYP’s Intersection 2019: Arrival (Currency Press), and Medusa Waking (Bad Company Theatre, 2021).

Lizy Spanos
Lizy Spanos is a Greek/Canadian performer with a deep love for music, dance, acting, and especially doing all three at once. They have been involved in community theater since the age of ten, in Canada, Greece, France, and Australia. Their most recent performances include Alice (Rattle, 2021) and Mabelu/Lucy (The Old Man and the Old Moon, 2021), and they have been in productions ranging from Shakespeare (in French!) to Rocky Horror Picture Show. They are extremely excited for the opportunity to play with a talented group of improvisors and improve their skill!

Ollie Gorringe

Ollie Gorringe is thrilled to be working with the Practitioners of the Ephemeral Arts, he has enjoyed performing since a young age and has been involved in several theatre productions throughout his schoolyears, including 100 Reasons for War (Hobart college, 2019), Carrie (Bijou, 2018) and The Old Man and The Old Moon (Jack Lark Presents, 2021). For the last two years Ollie has been employed as a Performer with the Round Earth Theatre Company on the West Coast of Tas, honing his skills in acting and storytelling.  Working with a talented set of creatives and performers in such a unique production has been an intoxicating experience for him and he hopes you enjoy the performance.

Jacob Golding 

Jacob Golding is a local performer who’s been seen in Hobart theatres since 2017. Most recently he was seen as Jeremy Heere in the Tasmanian premiere of Be More Chill in the Playhouse Theatre. Prior to stage Jacob has trained for the screen with Sara Cooper since 2010. Jacob is really excited to take on a new performance challenge, completely script less!

Milla Chaffer
Milla Chaffer has been working in theatre for many years in and out of schools. Milla has performed as Kathy Seldon in ‘Singing in the Rain’. Some of her other stage credits include Spring Awakening (Old Nick, 2018) and 21 Chump St (Old Nick, 2018). Her most recent role was as Heather McNamara in Old Nick’s production of ‘Heathers’ this year. Milla has also been working several shows as a part of the creative team, including her role as Assistant Director and Assistant Stage Manager for ‘The Old Man and the Old Moon’ (Jack Lark Presents) to be performed in September 2021. Milla is passionate about theatre both on and off stage and is always looking for opportunities to expand her experience.

Jack Lark
Jack Lark is a theatre producer, director and performer, who holds a bachelor of musical arts in vocal studies, training under Maria Lurighi. He has spent time in Los Angeles studying directing at USC, and has a hardcore passion for directing contemporary musical theatre. He produced the Australian premiere of ‘The Old Man and the Old Moon’ in 2021 and is currently collaborating to create a new Australian Musical Theatre Production.  Jack’s recent performances include As You Like It (Directions Theatre), My Fair Lady (Bijou Creative), and Miss Trunchbull for St.Mary’s College