Hope One
Hope One is a world-renowned Beatboxer, Theatre Performer and upcoming Slam Poet. Their pronouns are She/They, identifying as Maori, Queer and Non-binary currently.
Based in Brisbane Australia, Hope’s career started out winning an Australian Idol audition, landing a spot in the Beatbox Alliance and touring nationally. Later to develop into the award-winning, multi-disciplinary artist she is today. Placing third in the Womens division of the Beatboxing World Championships, warming up stages for major Hip Hop stars and touring the world with theatre show Hot Brown Honey.
Hope incorporates their drag alter-ego, activism and culture into sonically penetrating BeatRhyming experiences.
Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen is a Pasifika, Mona Nui A Kiwa Australian Born Writer, Story Teller and Matakite Ruahine. Currently working on Quandamooka Country, she heals and activates sacred and safe space in all realms. Her work focuses on liberation and decolonization of all pacific nations. Everything she does centers around the veneration of Atua Tupuna & the preservation of our sacred matauranga and whenua.
Ofa Fanaika
Ofa Fanaika, love song writer turn critic, provides unique perspective on the underrepresented viewpoints of theater audiences. As a queer Pasifika artist, Ofa writes to amplify diverse voices and interpretations of the arts at the community level.
Katie Rasch
Katie is a Meanjin based producer and artist who works across photography, installation work, curating and producing. In her own work she likes to explore themes of Pacific Futurism, fat acceptance and resistance to assimilation. After completing a bachelor degree in Film and Screen Media Production Katie is enjoying sinking her teeth into every kind of story telling that Brisbane has to offer. She loves immersive narratives and spectacular space/site designs.
Fliss Morton
Fliss is an emerging writer and director, currently completing her last semester of QUT’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drama). Fliss’ interest lies in telling and consuming stories that subvert the norm and normalise the subverted. Her works aim to diversify the stories being told, and to respectfully represent identities that are frequently misrepresented in popular culture. Her next show 'The Only Kind of Soulmates' will be on at Vacant Assembly in late August. When Fliss isn’t writing or rehearsing, she spends her nights exploring Brisbane’s buzzing creative scene – from play readings to variety shows to music gigs, she loves it all.
Sylvia Speakeasy
Sylvia Speakeasy is a performer, MC, writer and editor. While she loves many performance genres, her penchant is for burlesque and cabaret (the more flamboyant, the better). She particularly enjoys strong characters, strong storylines, and strong drinks.
Georgia McKenzie
Georgia is a recent graduate of the University of Queensland's Arts undergraduate program. She is currently completing post-graduate practice led research at the University of Queensland in Theatre Directing. Her thesis explores a bricolage of site-specific performance, feminist, affect, and Greek re-vision theories to examine the role that performance space has in feminist directing strategies.
Georgia is an experienced vocalist, performing in a variety of professional music groups, including The 8-Tracks and Art Deco Orchestra. Currently, she is working on two passion projects: a funk collective and her first solo EP.
Georgia has a colossal love of Greek Mythology, cows, and tea. She has a deep dislike of sand, misogyny, and writing bios.
Kati Murphy
Kati has always felt most 'at home‘ around a stage, and writing is her first love.
She is drawn to performances that are immersive, interactive and experimental; and gets excited about anything to do with mental illness and dis/ability; and the metaphorical 'big top‘ that is modern circus and sideshow.
Zac Burns
Zac is a dancer and writer based in Brisbane and is currently studying a Graduate Certificate in Writing, Editing, and Publishing at UQ. Earlier in 2021, he left his cozy blue-collar job to pursue his passion for writing, and really only regrets it on Mi-Goreng night. Zac is a member of the Second Degree crew and has performed in various shows around Brisbane, such as Brisasia Festival. For him, writing and dancing are closely aligned, as both change shape and form to express meaning. But also, both attract intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate practitioners to create wholesome and supportive communities, of which he's proud to be a part.
Katherine Quigley
Katherine specialises in producing collaborative, experimental, multi-arts cultural experiences. Throughout her 20 year career she has produced festivals, international conferences, experimental Chinese Opera, theatre, circus, numerous gigs and exhibitions and countless community workshop programs.
Aaron Dora
Aaron is a Producer and Creative in the arts and live performance sector working across diverse art forms. He has worked on projects in major arts organisations including Qld Music Trails, QMF (Queensland Music Festival), Opera Queensland, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, and Camerata - Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra as well as creatively producing independent theatre and film. Aaron specialises in managing complex arts projects with community and social outcomes, and has a particular interests in regional Queensland and arts education. Aaron holds a BFA (Drama) from QUT, and studied performing Drama and Film at Interlochen Centre for the Arts in Michigan, USA.
Kristy Stanfield
Kristy holds a Bachelor in Languages and Linguistics and generally loves all things wordy.
She has been active in the folk and world music scenes since her early twenties when she took up the accordion in a moment of poor judgment. These days she can be found playing both solo and with bands Zumpa and Úna Heera, but over the years has performed throughout the east coast in collaboration with various music, theatre, and circus artists. She has also worked as an ESL teacher and currently writes for Segmento magazine.
Kristy has a soft spot for the dark, the funny, the queer; any and all art that explores the challenges and ubiquities of the human condition.
Jaydem Martin
Jaydem is a First Nations writer born in Wellington, New South Wales. He is part of the Wiradjuri Nation and is the great grandson of Wiradjuri elder and Aboriginal activist, Aunty Joyce Williams, who also raised him since he was a child. Jaydem has had multiple poems published in the past as well as various sports articles that touch on Indigenous and Disability issues. He enjoys working on electronic music in his spare time and has a love for the weird and the alternative when it comes to art.
Dr Fed
Fed is Sardinian by birth, nomad by choice, and doctor of Peace and Conflict Studies by training. When she is not plotting at House Conspiracy , she teaches Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland.
As a proper Westender, she can be found handstanding on people and by the river, dancing with the moon, and in contemplation of visions of hope at art shows.
Fed writes on local art for The Westender, ArtsHub, and Nothing Ever Happens in Brisbane.
Phoebe Manning
Phoebe Manning is a character clown. She loves stories that reflect humanity. She has performed in festivals and cabarets around Australia. She works with Vulcana Circus.
Lauren Hale
Lauren is a Brisbane-based performer, maker, and professional silly billy. She has written, directed, and performed in countless shows and trains regularly with Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre Company. Lauren illustrates and co-publishes a short story zine called GULP! Fiction aimed at supporting local genre writers.
She believes that Brisbane is a juicy peach of weird and wonderful artists and will do everything she can to convince you to taste it.
Lizzie Vilmanis
A chameleon of the Arts Industry, Lizzie is an independent artist and Co-Director of Prying Eye whose work spans across performance, creation, production, admin, advocacy, education and health. Her primary practice investigates communication beyond words through the animated articulation of the human body.
A curious explorer of human behaviour she loves expanding creative capacity through collaboration with others. Also a deep thinker who is concerned with finding solutions that work for the long term, she is sometimes referred to as 'The Little Vampire' - probably also because she's a quiet one that tends to surprise people when they least expect it and because she manages to change between roles as if she has some sort of shapeshifting superpower.
Angela Peita
Angela Pieta is a performance poet, Founder of Ruckus Brisbane, one of Australia's largest poetry slams, and the current coordinator and producer of SlammED!, Queensland's largest interschools poetry slam learning program.
Kelsey A
Kelsey A isn’t a mover or shaker, but she is an avid art-maker. She struggles to settle down and has dabbled wide in circus, poetry, producing, gin appreciation and (shudder) academia. She believes art is about speaking to the soul; everything else is wrapping paper.
Flora Wong
Australian violinist Flora Wong is a musician, educator and curator who is drawn to the intersections between different disciplines of artistic practice. Based in Brisbane, Australia (Turrbal/Jagera land), she is a member of new music septet Nonsemble and founder of Hidden Dome, an event series that celebrates and advocates for diverse voices in the arts.