Meet The Creatives and Crew
Writer
Amanda Lay
In 2018 I signed up to a theatre acting class. We were tasked with finding monologues for classwork. Unimpressed with the options for women of a certain age, I decided to write my own. I started with a sports teacher giving a talk on sex education, a library assistant losing it during story time for small children and continued. My classmates loved them which gave me the confidence to write more. I branched out to ten-minute plays. Several have been performed in Wagga Wagga’s Once act play festival, I’ve been shortlisted for short and sweet and in April one of mine was performed as part of Sydney’s Short and Sweet. The same play, Reading of the Will is being performed in Short and Sweet Hollywood in July. I am very excited to finally have one performed in Brisbane.
Writer
Joy Hinckley
Joy has been involved in theatre since the 1970s. Director credits include Allo Allo, Arms and the Man, As You Like it, Hay Fever, Peter Pan, Harold and Maude and King Ubu.
Acting roles include Veronica’s Room, Rumours, Deathtrap, Calendar Girls and Our Country’s Good, as well as short films.
Joy has designed graphics for many theatre companies, and enjoys set and prop design.
She’s been involved in crafting and performing comedy revues, cabarets and street theatre, and her play Fencing is published by Australian Plays Transform. Other one-act plays have also been performed.
Writer
Nicky Peelgrane
Nicky Peelgrane a mother, writer, actor, director and Drama educator. She wrote Whatever Gets You Through the Night, a play about the first year of motherhood (development 2016, productions 2017 & 2022). Her production company Chrysalis Productions defied both Covid postponement AND flooding, performing their sold-out season to critical acclaim at Metro Arts West End in February 2022.
In 2019, Nicky was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship through University of Queensland. Her playwriting credits also include Prospero’s Dukedom, a play about Grin & Tonic Theatre Troupe (2019), Ghosts of Down Under (with Kellie Lazarus), which toured Queensland in 2018, as well as a suite of plays written for primary school students. Nicky has contributed stories to anthologies: Bjelke Blues (Avid Reader’s best-seller non-fiction list 2019), Our Inside Voices (2020), the Furphy National Literary Awards Anthology (2021), and Not Keeping Mum (2020) which was a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist for best anthology. As Drama educator, she co-authored Commedia Oz with Steve Gration (2008) published by Currency Press, a text book widely in use in Australian universities and schools. She has also written chapters in Drama Queensland’s book, Dramatic Encounters in 2020, and Commedia dell’Arte for the 21st Century, published by Routledge in 2022.
UPDATE: Recently (Aug 2024) shortlisted for the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer.
Writer
Rachel Feeny-Williams
Rachel Feeny-Williams is a playwright from Devon, UK who has been writing for twelve years and has a collection of 200+ plays and monologues, ranging from five minutes to two hours. When it comes to playwriting, Rachel likes to adopt a quote from C.S. Lewis that says "you can make anything by writing". Rachel's collection of work has been performed across the UK, in the USA and now makes its debut in Australia. She is also the author of two self-published collections of plays, as well as her full length crime/drama "Believe Me" which was published by Next Stage Press in May 2024. As well as playwriting, Rachel loves building up other playwrights, chiefly through her audio drama podcast 'Theatrical Shenanigans', which premiered in January 2023 on Podbean and since then has produced works by over 30 different playwrights from all over the world as well as chatted to multiple people from the arts world.
Stage and Technical Manager
Claire Yorston
Claire is a performer, writer, lighting technician /designer, director, stage manager and has an interest in musical theatre. Currently finishing up studying a Bachelor of Drama at UC/TAFE, she works on shows between uni. In 2022 she discovered smaller theatre companies where she could volunteer her time in order to learn more about lighting design which is where she started to gain connections and friends in the industry, Reagan Kelly (Underground; Lighting; 2022), The Trail to Oregon (Left of Right; Lighting; 2023), Nineteen (Underground Theatre; Lighting; 2023). Along with classmates, Claire worked on 5 original work show called Two Night Stand where she wrote her Debut play Blue, Two Night Stand (Thalia Arts Productions; writing/acting/directing/producing; 2023) and she discovered her love for creating and running works. Other credits include; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Brisbane Arts Theatre; Assistant Directing; 2023), Top Girls (Ad Astra; Lighting; 2023), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (Revised) (Again) (Sun and Wine; Lighting; 2023), Seascapes with Sharks and Dancer (Sun and Wine; Lighting; 2023), Metro Arts Brisfest Technician Intern (2023), When the Rain Stops Falling (Brisbane Arts Theatre; Stage Manager + Lighting Designer; 2024), After the End (Salad Day Collective; Lighting; 2024). She has/currently is working on shows at Underground theatre, The Brisbane Arts Theatre, Ad Astra and she’s a casual lighting technician at La Boite Theatre and QPAC.