ON HEAT

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 artist collective Polytoxic, with whom she creates hyper-visual works underpinned by intersectionality, diversity and collaboration.

As a solo artist, Leah has played on and off London’s West End and graced the cabaret stages of La Clique, Little Death Club and Vegas Nocturne. Her triptych of solo works interrogating gender and identity have received critical acclaim: ‘Terror Australis’ received numerous awards and toured Australia and France; ‘Bitch On Heat’, directed by UK Performance Art luminary Ursula Martinez, toured major festivals in Australia and SOHO Theatre London; and her most recent work ‘Batshit’ premiered to sell-out audiences and 5-star reviews at Brisbane Festival and Melbourne’s Darebin Arts Speakeasy in 2022.

Ursula Martinez is a London based performance maker. She began her solo career in the mid 90’s performing on the London cabaret scene and created her first theatre show A Family Outing in 1998. Since then she has created and directed many works straddling the different genre of theatre, cabaret, comedy, and live art.

Recent shows include Wild Bore, an international collaboration with Adrienne Truscott (US) and Zoe Coombs Marr (Australia) commissioned by Melbourne’s Malthouse, and A Family Outing – 20 Years On, commissioned by the Barbican and Perth Festival 2019, where Martinez was the artist-in-residence.

Martinez is an original cast member of the multi award-winning contemporary circus phenomena La Clique and La Soiree, and an associate artist with performance provocateurs ‘Duckie’, with whom she co-created the Olivier Award-winning show C’est Duckie.

Kenneth Lyons is an award winning multi-disciplinary artist with a creative practice spanning over 35 years. Over this time Kenneth has worked professionally in jewellery, video, graphic, costume, set and sound design with many examples of his work featured in festivals and exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has also project managed a number of community arts initiatives and is also a co-producer/presenter of the weekly international arts & independent music program, Curved Radio for Sydney’s 2SER FM.

His most recent collaborations with contemporary performance maker Leah Shelton have been on her multi-award winning solo works, Terror Australis which toured Australia, UK and France (2015-2019) and Bitch On Heat (2018-2019) which toured Australia and to the Soho Theatre London receiving critical acclaim.

Kenneth continues to explore the creation of imaginary soundtracks and contributes to a number of sound collectives under the monikers of radioShirley & mr.K.

Jason Glenwright is an award-winning Lighting Designer specialising in theatre, musical theatre, opera, concerts, cabaret, circus, dance and puppetry with over 300 production credits to his name. Jason’s work has been seen both nationally and internationally from the Sydney Opera House to New York’s Lincoln Centre, and London’s SOHO Theatre.

Jason has collaborated alongside many companies including Bell Shakespeare, Queensland Theatre, Opera Queensland, La Boite, Griffin Theatre Company, QLD Camerata Chamber Orchestra, Flipside, Queensland Music Festival, shake & stir, The Good Room, Little Red, Debase and Dead Puppet Society to name a few.

Daniel Evans is an award-winning writer, director and producer who has worked internationally in theatre, festivals, print and television. Most recently, he won the 2020 Matilda Award for Best Director for his work on Cinderella (QPAC & Myths Made Here).

Dan has worked with numerous theatre companies as both a playwright and director, including for Queensland Theatre on works such as Six Hundred Ways To Filter A Sunset (The Scene Project), Oedipus Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Queensland Premier’s Drama Award 2014–15, Australian Theatre for Young People), The Seagull and After Anton Chekhov (Brisbane Festival).

As a playwright and director, Dan has also worked with La Boite Theatre Company and QUT, as well as a director-facilitator for all major south-east Queensland universities and dramaturg for Polytoxic, The Little Red Company and The Nest. He has previously worked as a senior writer for Frankie magazine, SMITH Journal and SPACES and producer for Endemol Shine, iTV, Network Nine, Ten and SBS.

Together with Amy Ingram, he founded critically acclaimed performance collective, The Good Room, whose works include I Want To Know What Love Is (Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse, Critical Stages national tour), One Bottle Later (Brisbane Festival), (You Don’t Have To Put On Your) Red Light (Brisbane Festival), I Just Came To Say Goodbye, I’ve Been Meaning To Ask You, That’s What She Said (Metro Arts) and I Should Have Drunk More Champagne (Metro Arts).

Saffron Benner is a dramaturg with over twenty years’ experience collaborating with writers and artists to create new performance work. Her dramaturgical process is focussed on developing ideas from their inception in order to fully investigate all the possibilities of story and facilitating artists’ professional and creative skills development through mentoring, advocacy and networking. She has worked with many individual, award-winning writers including Daniel Evans, Marcel Dorney, Maxine Mellor, Rebecca Meston, David Burton, Claire Christian, Finegan Krukemeyer, and Tom Holloway.

Theatre companies she has worked with include Queensland Theatre, La Boite Theatre, Tasmanian Theatre Company, Australian Theatre for Young People, Backbone Youth Arts, KITE Theatre, Access Arts, and Vulcana Women’s Circus. She was the former Executive Director of Playlab (2008 – 2010) and the National Arts Education Editor and feature writer for Lowdown Magazine (2008-2010). Saffron is also an academic who specialises in contemporary Australian theatre – its history and development, and Australian women playwrights.

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 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).

Freddy has worked with accomplished directors including Bridget Boyle, Margi Brown-Ash, Shaun Charles, Daniel Evans, David Fenton, Michael Futcher, Eugene Gilfedder, Nasim Khosravi, Benjamin Knapton, Andy Packer, Benjamin Schostakowski, Garry Stewart, and Genevieve Trace.