Patrick Gunasekera (he/him) is a Sri Lankan-Australian interdisciplinary performance-maker, producer, teaching artist and cultural safety trainer, based on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar. Across theatre, dance, music and writing, his often-autobiographical works subvert western art canons with queer, disabled, and brown contexts of mutual aid, collaboration and agency. As an actor, pianist, singer and dancer, his performance practices revel in the dynamic embodiments of marginalised people, and centre sustainability and individuality within craft.
Patrick's past creative work includes After Nick (WWIM 2026), The Little Mermaid: a small scale ballet (The Blue Room Theatre Annual Season 2025), After Lili (Audible Edge Festival 2024), Unapologetic (co-created with Adam Kelly and Daley Rangi, commissioned for People with Disabilities WA Inaugural State Conference 2020), and short works Risk pas de deux (The Blue Room Theatre in partnership with STRUT Dance 2024), Towards Warmth (Make-Shift Evenings 2024), After Silence (On John Cage) (Outcome Unknown 2023), and Freight (The Blue Room Theatre 2019). He was also a dancer in CERCLES (Boris Charmatz / Terrain with STRUT Dance and Perth Festival 2026), and a devisor and performer in recital. (perhaps. a theatre company 2023 & 2024), Ngalaka Bininku (WA Youth Theatre Company in partnership with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company 2020), yourseven (WA Youth Theatre Company in partnership with PICA 2018), and House of Joys (KAN Collective 2018). He grew up studying western art music, and was a tenor in the Perth Pride Choir from 2016 - 2017. His writing has been published in Archer Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Voiceworks, Pulch Mag, Midsumma Blog, and the anthologies Growing Up Disabled in Australia (Black Inc. 2021), To Hold the Clouds (Centre for Stories 2020), and Wave After Wave (Centre for Stories 2019).
Patrick developed and facilitated a workshop on consensual storytelling called Autobiographical Storytelling for Deaf and Disabled Artists in residence at PICA in 2023. Since 2024 he has co-ordinated and taught disabled-only dance classes, originally supported by a STRUT Dance Space Grant and called Mobility Aid-Using Dance Jams. In 2025, as part of Audible Edge Festival's Night School, he curated and co-facilitated an all-disabled critical workshop series called Crip Constellations. His teaching practice is drawn from his background in peer education, and centres bodily autonomy, culturally safer methodologies, and non-hierarchical facilitation.
Since 2019 Patrick has worked in arts journalism at Seesaw Magazine, writing about the work of other disabled, migrant, queer and young artists.
He is a also a cultural safety trainer, and has collaborated with independent artists and arts organisations of all sizes locally and nationally to develop stronger reciprocal relationships with marginalised artists and audiences.