Christine Best
Christine is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts. Her career achievements include performances with The Big HOO-HAA!, Cut Snake Comedy, Spontaneous Insanity (Perth), Flying Pig Theatre Company, The Mill Theatre Company, Mixed Theatre Company, The Australian Shakespeare Company (Victoria), and Zootango Theatre Company and Tas Impro (Tasmania). Her improvisation skills have led to international performances in New Zealand (Paragon Arts) and Canada (The Loose Moose Theatre Company). She is a former Artistic Director of Salamanca Theatre Company and Theatre Now! (Tasmania).
Christine has collaborated with Buzz Dance Company (Perth) and worked as an Associate Director with Deckchair Theatre Company. (Perth). At Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Christine lectured in the Acting and Directing and directed performances for the Music Theatre Department. For Tasmanian Theatre Company she directed Uprising, which won Best Ensemble in the 2019 Tasmanian Theatre Awards.
Mel King
Mel is an actor, voice over artist, theatre director, puppeteer and has appeared in corporate videos, TV and film. Since graduating from Theatre Nepean, Mel has performed with Riverina Theatre Co, Canberra Theatre Co, Siren Theatre Co, and REM Theatre where she performed The Little Dragon in Seoul, Korea for 8 months. Mel joined Terrapin Puppet Theatre in 1994 and has performed in more than 15 shows touring nationally and internationally. Since permanently moving to Hobart in 2003, Mel has worked with Blue Cow Theatre, Big Monkey Theatre, Tasmanian Theatre Company (TTC), Tasmania Performs, Mudlark and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra including Ten Days on the Island, Dark Mofo and Junction Festivals. Directing credits include What Rhymes with Cars and Girls (TTC), 8 Gigabytes of Hard Core Pornography (TTC), Speaking in Tongues (The Hobart Rep), Caravan Boat Treehouse (Mudlark). Mel sits on the board of Mature Artists Dance Experience and Big Monkey Theatre.
Ellen Roe
Ellen is a stage and production manager, director, and a passionate advocate for youth theatre in Tasmania. She graduated from the University of Tasmania in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English and Journalism, Media and Communications. In 2019 she began a traineeship in stage management at the Tasmanian Theatre Company and has since worked with a wide range of Tasmanian arts companies including: Terrapin, Second Echo Ensemble, MADE, DRILL, Archipelago, Artelier, The Theatre Closet, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Dark Mofo and MONA FOMA.
Dean Stevenson
Graduating with a Masters of Music from UTAS, Dean has performed and across Australia, UK, Asia and the USA including a two-week season in the Lincoln Centre, New York. He has released several solo projects (In Time, Arco Set, The London Suite, WHYKINGS – with Al Future) and composed for film (Sixteen Legs – Book End Trust), for theatre (You and Me and the Space Between – Terrapin Puppet Theatre) and live events at many festivals, and often featuring his own project orchestra, The Arco Set.
In 2016, he produced new music by Sting in collaboration with David Walsh of MONA. In the same year Dean was commissioned by the Governor of Tasmania to write a new work to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th birthday.
Dean is a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship for a composition research project across eight countries. He currently lives in Hobart and is a composer in residence at MONA.
Greg Thompson
Greg has worked as a theatre technician for almost 50 years. He returned to Tasmania in 2019 after 22 years as the Technical Manager at the Alice Springs Cultural Precinct. Whilst in the Northern Territory Greg worked with a multitude of Central Australian companies and artists to produce a diversity of theatre productions and events.
From 1984 to 1986, Greg was the head theatre technician at Hobart’s Prince of Wales Theatre, and the technical Mmanager at the Theatre Royal from 1986 to 1992. Subsequently he worked freelance as a lighting designer, production manager and stage manager for numerous Tasmanian companies including Zootango Theatre Company, TasDance, Stompin’ Youth Dance Company, Salamanca Theatre Company, and Terrapin Puppet Theatre. Greg’s lighting design credits have included a wide variety of theatrical forms including contemporary and classical dance, drama, musicals, puppetry, physical theatre, circus, concerts, outdoor performances and events, and large ‘fire and light’ spectaculars. He has produced lighting designs for The Tasmanian Theatre Co. production of Gruesome Playground Injuries directed by Ben Winspear and for Blue Cow Theatre Co. production of Nothing directed by Kate Gaul for which he was awarded the 2020 Tasmanian Theatre Award for Outstanding Lighting Design.
Kate Gaul
Kate is a theatre and opera director, creative producer, festival director, designer, and writer based in Sydney, NSW. She is a graduate of NIDA (Directing 1996) and Artistic Director of Siren Theatre Co. Kate undertook a residency with SITI Company (NYC) and was Associate Director at Ensemble Theatre. Kate has established herself as a distinctive and inventive director, with directing credits including plays, opera, physical theatre, devised works, and classics for theatre companies and schools in Australia. She is Artistic Director of Siren Theatre Co where her passion is for text-based drama challenges artists and audiences to have bold imaginative experiences. Kate has also directed festivals (World Interplay, Playlist, Invisible Circus, Cabaret, and Short Play Festivals), and Sydney Mardi Gras Parade. Most recent directing credits include an acclaimed interpretation of H.M.S Pinafore, which toured extensively and last played Sydney Festival 2021. The End of Winter (2022) by Noëlle Janaczewska, which will have a national tour in 2023; and an opera/drama mash up based on the Jenet/Poulenc La Voix Humaine (2022) as part of The Flying Nun program.
Angela Barnard
Angela has worked as a performing artist in many capacities since completing a degree in dance at Deakin University in 2007. She was artistic associate for DRILL Performance company for 10 years and during that time choreographed three original works, two of which won Tasmanian theatre awards for Best Production in physical theatre.
Angela has worked with Tasdance, Mudlark Theatre, Moonlight Aviators, React, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Plot and Hobart Repertory Society, as a dancer, choreographer or actor and has been involved in festivals such as Dark MOFO, Ten Days on the Island, Junction, Mona Foma, Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival. She has choreographed more than 20 high school and college musicals and teaches dance at pre-tertiary level. Her involvement in the Uni Revue as a choreographer or performer has led her to be Vice President of the Old Nick Company Committee and she is also a member of the Plot Committee and the board of DRILL.