Keep Sleeping, Beauty

Psycho-siren Leah Shelton creates stylized, guttural, renegade feminist performance art soaked in cult references and dark humour. Her work has taken her from the glamour of Las Vegas to the back streets of Kings Cross, from rigorous training in Japan to live art festivals in New York. With Lisa Fa’alafi, Leah is Co-Director of intersectional theatre disrupters Polytoxic, creating protest party works underpinned by diversity and collaboration.

Leah’s triptych of solo works interrogating gender and identity have received critical acclaim. Highlights include touring France (TERROR AUSTRALIS), SOHO Theatre UK (ON HEAT), and winning the prestigious Scotsman Fringe First Award with BATSHIT, Directed by UK icon Ursula Martinez.

“Simply magnificent … don’t think I’ve ever seen an audience so totally gobsmacked.” (Seesaw Magazine)

Photo by Claudio Raschella.

Ursula Martinez is a London based theatre maker, performer and director.

After 20 years creating her own work, and performing in prestigious venues and Festivals around the world including Barbican (London) Sydney Opera House, and La Fondacion Cartier (Paris), Martinez naturally fell into directing. She has directed several internationally acclaimed productions including Lucy McCormick’s smash-hit shows Triple Threat and Post Popular, and Laura Murphy’s multi Award-winning A Spectacle of Herself.

She recently co-directed Casting Lear with Spanish artist Andrea Jimenez. The production won Spain’s highest theatre Award; a Premio Max, for Best Show. Martinez also has an Olivier Award (2004) for C’est Barbican, a co-creation with London’s pioneering performance collective Duckie, and is an original cast member of the Olivier Award-winning La Clique. This is her second collaboration with Leah Shelton.

Photo by Daniel Hambury.

Kenneth Lyons is an award winning artist with a creative practice spanning over 40 years. Kenneth has worked professionally in jewellery, video, graphic, costume, set and sound design with work featured in festivals and exhibitions nationally and internationally. A former Creative Industries academic for 20 years, he was also co-producer/presenter of the arts program, Curved Radio for Sydney’s 2SER and EastSide Radio FM for 10 years.

His most recent collaborations with Leah Shelton have been on her solo works, Terror Australis, On Heat and BATSHIT.

Kenneth continues to explore the creation of imaginary soundtracks and contributes to a number of global sound collectives.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Freddy Komp works in theatre and event production and loves delving into multi-disciplinary forays across AV, Set, and Lighting Design (nominated for 2 Groundling Awards and recipient of 2 Matilda Awards) and in AV Visual Arts Installations (including Living Rocks: A Fragment of the Universe at Venice Biennale 2019 and ZKM Karlsruhe’s The Beauty of Early Life 2022), and in stage/production management. He loves a good challenge that demands a variety of skills as well as creative problem solving, and led the production teams at Adelaide Film Festival (2015-2018) and Hybrid World Adelaide(2017+2018) before returning to Queensland (as technical manager for Brisbane Festival 19’s  Arcadia, and technical director for Little Red Company’s first Lord Mayor’s Christmas Carols 2021).

Photo courtesy of the artist.