Psycho-siren Leah Shelton creates stylized, guttural, renegade feminist work 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.

As a solo artist, Leah has played on and off West End in London. She has graced the cabaret stages of La Clique, Little Death Club, Vegas Nocturne and Jonny Woo’s UnRoyal Variety Show. 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..

With Lisa Fa’alafi, Leah is Co-Director of artist collective Polytoxic, creating hyper-visual works underpinned by diversity, intersectionality and collaboration. Polytoxic have presented work at PS122’s COIL Festival NYC, Harbourfront Centre Canada, WanSmolbag Vanuatu, Sydney Opera House, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, APAM, Bleach* , Enlighten, ArtsHouse Melbourne, Ten Days on the Island, Brisbane Powerhouse and QPAC.

Originally dance-trained, Leah has a diverse performance background including over ten years training in the Suzuki Actor Training Method with Frank Theatre (Brisbane, AU), Suzuki Company of Toga (Toga / Shizuoka, Japan) and SITI Company (New York, USA).

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 a long term collaborator with performance provocateurs ‘Duckie’, with whom she co-created the Olivier Award-winning show C’est Duckie.

Martinez also works as a freelance theatre director. She has directed numerous shows nationally and internationally, including 3 smash-hit shows from performance provocateur Lucy McCormick (UK) and 2 from Australia’s award-winning Leah Shelton.

But for all her theatrical accolades, because of the internet, Martinez is probably most well known for pulling red hankies out of her vagina!

https://ursulamartinez.com/

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. www.jasonglenwright.com

Grace Uther is a film director, screenwriter & producer. In 2021, Grace collaborated with intersectional feminist performance-makers Polytoxic to direct a documentary about their radical and inclusive creative process as they staged their show DEMOLITION for Brisbane Festival. Grace is the director of ABC iView’s The Brothers’ Book Club, a modern book review and skit show produced by Kiosk Film and supported by Screen Queensland. Alongside an extensive career in film and television production, her darkly comic, female driven thrillers have screened internationally at festivals including MonsterFest, Nightmares Film Festival (USA), LA Femme International Film Festival, and the Gold Coast’s SIPFEST, picking up awards including Best International Director at the Austin After Dark Festival.

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.